Exxon John, the video

The DNC has set up a Website and has also put out the above video detailing how John McCain is in bed with Big Oil. I know, I know - like that's news. Anyway, it's worth a look, and it's no secret that McCain has received a boatload of cash from Big Oil (including ExxonMobile) since he changed his position on outer continental shelf drilling.

Letter to use: alternative energy sources

After Al Gore's inspiring speech yesterday about alternative energy sources, I promised a form letter you all could use to write your legislators in your state and in Washington. Below is the letter I sent off to my U.S. Rep. a little while ago; I am also sending it to both of my U.S. Senators and also my state senator and representative as well. Again, feel free to copy/paste my text below to use as a starting point. (As I mentioned earlier today, I encourage you to alter your letter somewhat - legislators tend to ignore form/chain letters, so please add some of your own thoughts and concerns, too.) If you need to find out who your federal legislators are, click Here. On to my letter:

Dear Rep. Brady,
I'm writing to you regarding energy alternatives in America, or a lack of them. In short, we need more and more of them, yesterday. I vehemently oppose additional off-shore drilling on the outer continental shelf, or in ANWR. This will only serve to threaten the environment and prolong our addiction to oil.

I urge you to support an Apollo-like program to develop multiple ways for American to kick our oil addiction, including much, much more money for mass transit (which Congress has long neglected at best. or ignored at worst - I tend to believe the latter); solar, wind, and wave technologies; and yes, better batteries like John McCain has proposed, too.

This program should also include tax incentives for companies to develop these technologies and to build them in the United States, with no loopholes (and that includes cheap labor in the Mariana Islands - the Tom DeLay loophole). If any manufacturing or R&D jobs get off-shored by a company that's received tax breaks, they should be rescinded immediately.

I also would like to see Big Oil pay more for the oil that it is already getting, courtesy of contracts from the U.S. government; the 12.5% oil companies currently pay is PATHETIC. It is OUR oil, not theirs. It should be doubled, and the revenue raised could serve as tax relief, or better yet, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and as tax incentives for development of new energy technologies.

I listened to Al Gore's speech yesterday in its entirety, and I found it inspiring. As a fellow Democrat, I hope and expect that you will be an active, forceful advocate for proposals like his.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning more about how you will support alternative energy sources. America needs to act boldly and quickly, NOW, and more drilling is not an option.

Thanks very much for your time.

Sincerely,

RJ

Again, please take just a few minutes to write your legislators. We have to demand action, and more importantly, we have to elect leaders to Congress who are going to be forceful advocates of alternative energy and change. I will share any responses I get from my legislators with you.

Photo: AP/LM Otero

Another response to the Gore speech

I also got this response yesterday from a guy named Sean about my post on Al Gore's speech, and it's at least a little more reasonable than the response than the one I posted below. It reads:

It seems that Mr. Gore has changed his marketing message. While he still makes multiple claims that are a little hard to substantiate, he doesn't seem to be making the wild claims he did in An Inconvenient Truth (see http://globalwarming-factorfiction.com/2007/10/26/35-inconvenient-truths-the-errors-in-al-gores-movie-part-1-of-5/)

Now, Mr. Gore is taking the energy independence tactic. This is much more realistic and more people are likely to make "sacrifices" for the sake of energy independence if we state that we have to break away from the Mideast and destroy their power over us. He seems to put a lot of his reliance on solar energy though and we should probably include nuclear and hydrogen in that discussion.

Sean makes a good point here about alternative energy sources, and I totally agree - perhaps Al Gore is tacking differently now and trying another strategy. If so, good on him. I don't buy into all of the anti-Inconvenient Truth stuff, but it's certainly possible that Gore didn't get everything right in the movie. However, I firmly believe (as do many scientists) that the basic premise of the movie is sound. Sure, you can find scientists who disagree with Gore, and some of them might not even be sponsored by or work for Big Oil. But, those scientists are few and far in between. And as the North Pole continues melting as we speak, time really is running out for us.

I think Gore is moving to the next stage now. His movie and many of his speeches have sufficiently raised the alarm about the problem (I certainly hope). Now he's moving on to the Solutions stage. I can only hope our politicians are listening to reason. But, it's our job to make sure that they are.

More to follow on this, including some e-mails I've written to my legislators.

Picture above by Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times 

Debunking the bunk on Al Gore's speech

Well, the reception from Al Gore's speech yesterday has been pretty predictable in many ways. (A short clip from the full version of his speech is above - and it's the best part, where he challenges America to have 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years.) Those who oppose him for political reasons are still whining about his electricity bill while ignoring the real problems facing our country. After I blogged about Gore's speech yesterday, I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of people, imploring them to at least listen to Gore's speech with an open mind. Here are two very different responses (my comments follow each one).

Here's the predictable, negative, right-wing ideological tripe in an e-mail from an unidentified conservative who I know through someone else:

If Clinton hadn't vetoed the bill to drill in ANWR back in 1994, we wouldn't have such dependency on foreign oil and we wouldn't have the high gas prices we have now. I've written to my congressmen to 'Drill here, drill now'. We need to keep gas prices down while exploring cost effective alternatives. Food prices are soaring due to the regulations "forcing" the use of ethanol (ever notice how much stuff uses corn syrup?).

How can you take Algore seriously when he's the biggest hypocrite out there? The money paid for "Carbon Credits" goes to a company he owns. And his own home uses 20 times the national average in energy consumption (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/Story?id=2906888&page=1)

(silly you...you know I have a soap box too....and I remember the Carter years and the misery index and I fear for our country (and my hard earned income) if a Socialist is elected president :-( )

Hmm - where to start...

First, I'm actually pretty amused that some conservatives can actually find a way to tie 2008 fuel prices to President Clinton. And just when I thought the Blame Clinton fad had faded. How silly of me. Conservatives have spent the last eight years blaming Bill Clinton for just about everything bad, all while George W. Bush has been driving America into the ground on many fronts. I'm happy and proud that Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling. The idea that ANWR can alleviate our energy problem is a farce and a sham, perpetuated by those on the right who think that a little more oil from our modest (at best) oil reserves will lower prices. WRONG. ANWR, even by generous estimates, would only provide a fraction of oil that American uses on a daily basis (approx. 21 million barrels per day, as of 2008). To wit, according to a statistical report from the U.S. Department of Energy:

The opening of the ANWR 1002 Area to oil and natural gas development is projected to increase domestic crude oil production starting in 2018. In the mean ANWR oil resource case, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR reaches 780,000 barrels per day in 2027 and then declines to 710,000 barrels per day in 2030. In the low and high ANWR oil resource cases, additional oil production resulting from the opening of ANWR peaks in 2028 at 510,000 and 1.45 million barrels per day, respectively. Between 2018 and 2030, cumulative additional oil production is 2.6 billion barrels for the mean oil resource case, while the low and high resource cases project a cumulative additional oil production of 1.9 and 4.3 billion barrels, respectively.

What's all this mean? That we still need foreign oil, and lots of it, to function as we are right now with very little mass transit options, few explored alternative energy sources, and virtually no other automobile options, save a smattering of hybrids that are hitting the market, which still rely on oil to run.

There are a few more things that conservatives aren't considering, and that our corporate media (and Faux News) isn't telling us. One, has anyone considered that if we do start drilling on our outer continental shelf and in ANWR, OPEC could simply reduce production by the same amount, thereby keeping prices high? What or who is to stop them, other than begging by our politicians? The answer is, nothing, unless a Republican president wants to invade another country in the Middle East. (How much oil does Iran have again?)

Anyone who thinks that OPEC will sit on its collective hands and not lower production while we drill for more oil, thereby lowering the price of oil, raise your hand. Now go sit in the corner and put on a dunce cap.

Two, it amazes me that people think if we start drilling tomorrow that gas prices will magically come down. It ain't happenin', capt'n. These people (like the e-mailer above) who write their elected legislators demanding that we "drill here, drill now" don't realize that it's only going to line the pockets of Big Oil and the politicians they support (and we know who most of them are: G-O-P), and also destroy the environment in the process. It's just one more example on a tragically long list of ways that Republicans convince people to vote against their economic (and environmental) self interests.

Big Oil is NOT friendly to the environment, and there are many, many examples, most notably the Exxon Valdez. Sickeningly enough, ExxonMobile has fought in the courts tooth and nail the people whose livelihoods the company destroyed, refusing to make adequate restitution. So, should we open up a pristine refuge for Big Oil to come in and rape the land? How about, NO!?! No way. Big Oil has proven time and time again to be environmentally unfriendly (to be kind), yet now it claims it can extract oil from ANWR "in environmentally sensitive ways." (A line that President Bush happily pimps on TV, over and over and over.) That just sounds good for the political argument to turn our land over to Big Oil to be raped and pillaged.

Three, I seldom hear this argument voiced, but it's our oil, and by our I mean citizens of the United States - it's not Big Oil's. Currently, the oil companies pay the U.S. Government 12.5 percent of the oil's market value to get it out of the ground. If a law does get passed allowing Big Oil access to ANWR & the outer continental shelf, that rate should be doubled, and the money should go entirely toward development of alternative energy sources. What's more, a law should be passed imposing strict fines on the oil companies should they have an oil spill. What a novel concept - the polluter pays, not the taxpayer. In the last 30 years (since Reagan took office) - it's been the taxpayers who have largely been paying for corporate environmental disasters, not the polluter. That's an outrage of Biblical proportions.

As far as Al Gore and his electricity bill, I'm not going to waste a whole lot more time on it here, as I've blogged about this before, but I will repeat a few things (Note: it's "Al Gore," not "Algore," an elementary smear perpetuated by drug addict Rush Limbaugh, the uneducated Sean Hannity, and the asinine Newt Gingrich. It's sort of like saying the "Democrat Party" in lieu of the "Democratic Party," a McCarthy-era smear every bit as stupid and childish):

1. Gore has publicly stated that he purchases renewable energy and has taken many steps to reduce his carbon footprint, including putting up solar panels on his mansion in Tennessee, and I believe him. Hey, if the guy has one solar panel, it's one more than the White House has. But, the White House DID have solar panels when Jimmy Carter was president, but Reagan had them taken down. How stupid does that look, in hindsight?

2. The entire faux Gore Electricity Bill "story" has been endlessly flogged and pimped by a group called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a right-wing funded group that has been out to smear Gore for years now, specifically the day after his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, won two Oscars. But, I'm sure the timing was entirely coincidental, right? Anyway, read more about the myths behind Gore's electricity bill Here and Here.

3. Quite frankly, I don't care if Gore criss-crosses the globe in a 747 by himself - he's done more to raise awareness about global warming in the last two years than George W. Bush (or his father) did in three presidential administrations.

4. It's tragically hilarious that President Bush went out of his way on television a few days ago to say that he would NOT encourage Americans to conserve energy, that it's "not his place to do that." Unreal. Like it would be a bad thing for the president to set an example for the American people. Then again, why start now?

5. One more thing about oil spills - the right has perpetuated the myth total lie that there were no oil spills during Hurricane Katrina. I will write more about this in a bit - it warrants a separate post, but it's absolutely, 100 percent FALSE. This is yet another blatant example of the right-wing media's strategy of repeating a lie over and over, hoping that people will believe it if they hear it often enough. Sell that crap to the tourists, because I ain't buyin' it.

To be fair, I will say this about the e-mail above - she brings up two points that I sort of agree with, so there is some common ground.

First, ethanol is NOT the answer - I totally agree. Burning food for fuel is a monumentally stupid idea. But, it's not Gore who has been pimping ethanol, it's been President Bush. Spend 15 minutes on YouTube and you can find plenty of Bush speeches where he's talking so favorably about ethanol, you'd think we have enough corn to power the entire planet.

Second, I've never been a big fan of carbon credits, but I don't yet know too much about it. However, I'm not keen on giving a corporation my money, with which it promises to "plant a tree" or something of the like. I'll make my own decisions about how I help the environment, thanks very much. Hey, I may be a big fan of Al Gore (notice the spelling), but I'm not slavishly devoted to every idea he has. Just most of them. And I'm hearing more ideas and bold goals come out of his mouth about the environment than I've heard from Bush in 7+ years, but I'm repeating myself. (But that point bears repeating, to be sure.)

However, if Gore chooses to invest in a carbon credit company, so what? I'm sure he's invested in a great deal of "green" companies. How is that a bad thing? People who accuse him of promoting green ideas because he owns stock in some innovative green companies are missing the point, and are stuck in a Rush Limbaugh-like drug-induced haze, where being critical of Al Gore is supposed to be the right's answer to his innovative ideas, as well as our energy problems.

Speaking of investments, I guess the conservative e-mailer above has never heard of Halliburton, a company headed by Dick Cheney until he became vice president, and also the same company that's received no-bid contract after no-bid contract in Iraq. (Also a company that recently moved its world headquarters to the Middle East, away from prying eyes in the U.S. Anyone care to bet how much cash Cheney is lavished with from the company once he leaves office?) Halliburton has made hundreds of millions during this administration, due in no small part to its connections at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

And finally, I got a kick out of this line from the e-mail above: I remember the Carter years and the misery index. ... (Read: Hey, you stupid kid, I know more than you because I've been around longer.) Please - get a grip. What's more, turn off Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Lielly and their ilk and get some real news. Here's a few recent news items that this person may have missed: Consumer prices jumped 1.2 percent in June, the biggest one-month jump since another Republican recession, circa 1982. And a recent Washington Post poll revealed that consumer confidence is at a 16-year low, the lowest since 1992, another year of a Republican recession. But hey, let's not facts get in the way.

I also laugh and laugh at Repubes bringing up Carter whenever they get the chance, including McCain, who impressed no one with the witless remark, "Obama keeps saying I'm running for a third Bush term, but it sounds like he's running for Jimmy Carter's second term." Funny how McCain never mentions the eight years of President Clinton, which were mostly a time of economic growth. If Jimmy Carter's all McCain's got, he's going to have the look of a candidate who's going to get his ass kicked this November.

I'll bring up the other e-mail shortly in a separate post.

If this guy's right about oil, we're screwed

I cannot even comprehend what our economy would be like if gas were to rise above $6 or $8 per gallon, much less $12 to $15, but that's precisely what energy analyst Robert Hirsch believes is going to happen.

I'm no energy expert, and I'm certainly no economist, but you have to be neither to foresee the consequences of double-digit gas prices on our economy.

I have to confess that I find it extremely annoying that certain politicians and of course the Big Oil executives (who themselves make hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation) are preaching that we need to drill and explore more to combat high gas prices. What a crock. However, don't take my word for it - Read Here.

Drilling in ANWR would do little more than line the pockets of Big Oil, and the politicians who approve such a move. I can just about guarantee that there would be no price relief at the pump.

What this country needs is a sound energy policy, and fast. Okay, by fast, I mean when hopefully Barack Obama takes the oath of office next January. Heaven help us if McCain is putting his hand on the Bible at noon on 1/20/09, because that will mean plenty more of the same in the way of energy policy.

We must demand a very radical mass-transit and alternative energy plan from this next administration, which in many ways will be about 170 degrees different from what the Bush administration has spent the last 7+ years giving us.

Alternative energy and mass transit will be a major, major theme of this blog in the coming months and years, including form letters to use to write your elected legislators, news, views, ideas on how to save energy, etc., so stay tuned. This one affects us all, and there will be no hiding from it in the coming years and decades. We've already seen what rising gas prices have done to the prices of just about everything, and it's only going to get worse, unless we demand that our state legislatures and Congress do something about it.

(Major hat tip to Crooks & Liars for the video, as well as the research in finding the MSNBC link on the '04 ANWR study.)

No go, Sunoco

The sticker

This has got to be the lamest attempt at goodwill and free advertising that I've seen in some time from an oil company.

Have you seen the above sticker? I've seen a few of them on vehicles in the Philly area, but they are all over taxi cabs. It's a contest where, if you put this sticker on your vehicle, you can win gas from Sunoco, if you're seen by one of Sunoco's spotters. The grand prize is 5,000 gallons of gas. Quick confession - I grabbed two for our cars, brought them home, read the back, thought about it for a second, then laughed at my gullibility.

In short, Sunoco can wipe its collective ass with these if they think I'm putting them on our cars. It's bad enough we get prison pounded at the pump every time we fill up; but our cars aren't going to serve as Big Oil billboards. Besides, if I put one of these on my car, it's less room for stickers telling Big Oil and their Republican buddies to fuck off.

Dubya on & off script...scary

Jon Stewart must have the best crack research department in the political comedy business.

Bush has nominated Air Force General Michael Hayden to replace Porter Goss as head of the CIA. The other night on The Daily Show, Stewart played clips of when Bush announced both Goss and Hayden as his nominee to head the agency. Identical. Hilarious. Download and the view the clip Here. When you click on the link, you will have to go down the page about 2/3 of the way, but trust me, this is worth the effort - it's Bush at his scripted best (or worst?)!

I'm not so sure that Hayden is the best choice, but, to be honest, I view his having headed the NSA for six years as a positive, not a negative. But, I haven't done a whole lot of reading and research on him yet, so that opinion is off the cuff and nothing more.

Bush At His Unscripted Worst
During a question and answer session on May 9 at the Kings Point Clubhouse in Sun City Center, Florida, Bush answered (or attempted to answer) a question about the Alaskan pipeline. Take a read...

Q: I would like to ask one question about the Alaskan pipeline. My understanding is that most of that supply does not come to the United States, and I would like to know why that goes to other countries rather than to where it's needed here, so that we can --

THE PRESIDENT: You mean the crude oil coming down the pipeline?

Q: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: I don't know where it goes, to be honest with you. Sorry. I can find out. (Laughter)

Q: Okay. Could we just divert a little bit of that our direction, please? (Laughter)

THE PRESIDENT: I thought you were going to ask, how come we don't have the gas pipeline coming down yet - because there's a lot of untapped oil and gas up there that can be explored in environmentally friendly ways. And I think we ought to be drilling in ANWR - it's called ANWR. I know we can do it and protect the environment at the same time. And I know there's a lot of untapped gas up there that we ought to get down through pipeline, as well. I don't know where all the oil goes coming out of the pipeline now. I'll try to find out for you.

###

Now I may be nitpicking here, but it cracks me up that the president knows so much about all of the natural gas and oil that we should drill and explore for in ANWR, yet he cannot even answer a question about where the oil goes now. No wonder he played to carefully screened and selected audiences prior to the '04 election, and why his advisors don't want him in many unscripted situations.

I won't get into an ANWR rant right now, except to say this: When the president says that ANWR can be explored in "environmentally friendly ways," he should be wearing a brown suit, because he's 100% full of shit. Anyone remember the Exxon Valdez disaster? That's when about 12 million gallons of crude oil were dumped into Prince William Sound in 1989 when the Exxon supertanker ran aground, devastating the environment, wildlife and the lives of fisherman and residents. To date, Exxon has paid a measly $300 million in cleanup costs. I say measly because Exxon, the world's biggest oil company, lost a court ruling and has been ordered to pay over $5 billion to the people whose lives the drunken, iceberg slaloming captain of the Valdez ruined. Yet, the company continues to fight and appeal instead paying the settlement and allowing these people to move on with their lives. By the way, last year alone the company had over $30 billion in profits .

So, there isn't exactly a good precedent of oil companies being friendly to the environment up north, and when an accident does happen, big oil hasn't exactly been contrite and willing to do the right thing. So, why should the government whore out more of its lands to big oil? And let's be honest here, if this was a puddle of black gold the size of the Saudi Arabian oil fields, that might outweigh the risks. But, it's not - all of the oil extracted from the ground might supply the U.S. for less than a year, and that's an optimistic estimate. Depending on where you get your numbers from and the ax that source has to grind, estimates on how much oil is in ANWR vary widely. But, even with the most optimistic of estimates, it's not like we're sitting on a gigantic, untapped oil reserve that could change the course of our foreign oil dependence. Experts have been saying this for years, but deaf Republicans obviously aren't listening - we cannot drill our way out of foreign oil dependence. (Maybe Republicans are "deaf" because of all the green that big oil lines their pockets with.) So, I still think drilling in ANWR isn't worth the environmental costs and risks, at least until the oil companies can totally prove they can do it without screwing the environment, and until they sign a legally binding pledge to pay all cleanup costs in the event of an accident, and not fight damages Exxon style. When those two conditions are met, maybe, just maybe, it'll be time to drill.

Speaking of ANWR, the president sure seemed happy that he knew it's called ANWR, didn't he? Doofus. I bet he had one of those snide grins when he said that, too.