Saving America from planet-threatening fossil fuels

By sacrificing our economy, environment, living standards, freedoms and security
 
Paul Driessen
 
Presidential candidate Joe Biden repeatedly promised to end fossil fuels in America. There’ll be “no more drilling, including offshore,” he said. “No ability for the oil industry to drill. No more pipelines.” 
 
Shortly after reaching the White House, President Biden ended Keystone XL pipeline construction and began working with congressional Democrats, regulators and eco-activists to impose leasing and drilling moratoriums, slow-walk permits, pressure financial institutions to deny funding to fossil fuel companies, and implement “social cost of carbon” rules, “environmental justice” programs, “windfall profit” taxes and other policies to close down or bankrupt fossil fuel projects and companies.
 
His Securities and Exchange Commission says companies must “disclose risks” from alleged “manmade climate change” – from their own production, refining and manufacturing operations; from suppliers and customers using their products; and from government anti-carbon policies.
 
Supplies predictably dwindled, and prices skyrocketed. Not just for gasoline and other fossil fuels that still provide 80% of all U.S. energy, but for fertilizers, farm chemicals, pharmaceuticals, paints, plastics, cosmetics and countless other petroleum-based products – and for goods and services that require offices, factories, stores and transport that need reliable, affordable energy. In other words, for nearly everything.
 
Keystone alone would have brought the United States 700,000 barrels of friendly Canadian oil. That’s equal to the petroleum Russia was sending America before Mr. Biden finally banned the imports, after Vladimir Putin’s butchery in Ukraine reached levels that even far-Left Democrats couldn’t stomach.
 
President Biden tried to blame Putin for food, fuel and other prices that had been soaring well before the Ukraine invasion. He’s now pleading with American oil companies to increase production – but only temporarily (to send liquefied gas to Europe and to protect Democrat office holders in November), without easing his anti-oil edicts.
 
He begged Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela to increase their oil production. He used Russia to broker a new nuclear deal with Supreme Leader Ali Khameni, so that Iran can sell more oil on the global market. He apparently believes those sources don’t emit “dangerous” carbon dioxide.
 
Above all, Team Biden doubled down on calls for America to switch from gasoline cars to electric vehicles, and from coal and natural gas electricity generation to wind, solar and backup battery power. They claim this massive, costly restructuring of America can replace “dirty, planet-threatening” fossil fuels with “clean, renewable, sustainable” wind, solar and battery energy. It’s a duplicitous con.
 
Wind turbines and solar panels on this scale would defile millions of acres of crop, scenic and habitat land. They would kill millions of birds, bats and other wildlife. They require massive amounts of raw materials (and thus mining) to create expensive, inefficient, weather-dependent energy devices. They and 1000-pound battery modules are the least clean, renewable, sustainable energy sources imaginable.
 
“Clean” technologies merely replace CO2 and methane emissions in the USA with massive amounts of real, toxic pollution in other countries, out of sight and mind, where climate activists can ignore them.
 
A Green New Deal would make America almost totally reliant on China, Russia and other despotic and unstable nations for the metals and minerals needed for GND technologies. And for the equipment itself, because a fossil-fuel-free America wouldn’t have the reliable energy needed to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transformers and thousands of miles of new transmission lines. America’s entire GND energy and economic future could depend on their tyrannical good graces.
 
China, Russia and their surrogates could wield green tech as a strategic weapon, banning exports of materials or technologies to advance their political goals. They could even embed trip-switches or backdoors for hackers in equipment they sell to us, enabling them to close down part or all of our electrical grid and economy. A shutdown could kill millions.
 
The quantities of metals, minerals and other raw materials required for this “green energy transition” are almost incomprehensible. We would have to mine Planet Earth on unprecedented scales.
 
The first stage of President Biden’s offshore wind energy program alone would require 110,000 tons of non-renewable copper – plus millions of tons of cobalt, lithium, nickel, aluminum, iron, manganese, rare earth elements, platinum, plastics, concrete, and that suddenly very visible and valuable metal: nickel.
 
His plan calls for 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. That’s 2,140 monstrous 850-foot-tall 14-MW turbines. It sounds like a lot of electricity, but it wouldn’t even meet New York State’s peak summertime electricity needs. And they’d generate zero electricity half the year.
 
Based on average global copper ore bodies, just those 110,000 tons of copper would require removing 40,000,000 tons of overburden and processing 25,000,000 tons of ore. That’s enough crushed rock to cover a 24-foot-wide highway from Washington, DC to Tampa, Florida ten feet deep! Just for the copper.
 
(Or you could bury the White House, Capitol Hill, all the most climate-focused federal agencies, and all Greenpeace, Sierra Club and other eco-pressure groups’ DC offices under 100 feet of rock and dust.)
 
Climate- obsessed legislators, regulators, activists and judges detest and contest mining anywhere in the United States, even to support the Green New Deal they claim is essential to save America, our planet and humanity from “climate cataclysms.” They’ve already made millions of acres off limits to exploration and mining, affecting numerous world-class prospects.
 
In just the past couple years, they prevented three critically needed mines from opening: Alaska’s Pebble Mine (billions of pounds of copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, rhenium and other metals); Minnesota’s NorthMet mine (billions of pounds of copper, cobalt, platinum and nickel); and enormous lithium deposits in Nevada.
 
That means GND mining and processing would take place in Asia, Africa and Latin America, mostly by or under the auspices of Chinese firms – under environmental, pollution control, workplace safety, and child and slave labor rules, standards and practices that were repudiated in America 50-100 years ago.
 
Will the White House, congressional Democrats, EPA, Labor Department and SEC demand that companies disclose all those fossil fuel uses, risks, environmental impacts and human rights abuses?
 
They loudly promote electric vehicles and a total transformation of the U.S. energy system and economy. But they say nothing about acquiring the raw materials and equipment essential for turning these dreams into reality. They are silent about the land destruction, air and water pollution, wildlife losses, human diseases and deaths, and eco-imperialism that their policies impose, especially on people of color.
 
They are mute about the ways their “climate protection” racket would allow China, Russia and other thuggish regimes to pursue their territorial ambitions – and give them unprecedented control over the Western World’s energy, jobs, economies, living standards, foreign policies and national security.
 
They make no attempt to calculate how many wind turbines, solar panels, vehicle and backup battery modules, transformers and transmission lines would be needed in a fossil-fuel-free, all-electricity nation. How many acres of wildlife habitat would be disrupted or destroyed. How many new mines would have to be opened. How many birds, bats and other animals would be killed. How many trillions of tons of ores and overburden would have to be blasted away and processed. Or how many huge landfills we’ll need for all the worn-out turbines, blades, panels and batteries. They certainly don’t discuss how much our living standards, personal choices and basic freedoms would be reduced in their “clean energy” America.
 
They don’t ask because they don’t want to know – and don’t want us to even think about these issues.
 
Putin’s Ukraine war has opened eyes about NATO, disarmament and Europe’s feckless reliance on Russian natural gas. We need equal realism about America’s climate and energy policies – and how far America’s ruling elites would take us down the path to ruin, to achieve their Green Utopia.
 
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of articles and books on energy, climate change, human rights and environmental issues.  
  Contact me: pkdriessen@gmail.com

Biden Admin Weighing Shutting Down Oil Pipeline In Michigan As Gas Prices Skyrocket Across U.S.: Report

By  Ryan Saavedra Nov 5, 2021 

Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly gathering data on an oil pipeline in Michigan to determine if shutting it down would further increase fuel prices in the region.

“Revoking the permits for the [Line 5] pipeline that delivers oil from western Canada across Wisconsin, the Great Lakes and Michigan and into Ontario, would please environmentalists who have urged the White House to block fossil fuel infrastructure, but it would aggravate a rift with Canada and could exacerbate a spike in energy prices that Republicans are already using as a political weapon,” Politico Pro reported. “Killing a pipeline while U.S. gasoline prices are the highest in years could be political poison for Biden, who has seen his approval rating crash in recent months.”............To Read More....

Pipeline anarchy

Trump win fuels more rampant theft and destruction – and North Dakota citizens pay the price

Paul Driessen

Is this to be our future? Last week’s elections will soon end autocratic rule via executive fiat, the war on coal and hydrocarbons, IRS agents targeting conservative groups, government SWAT teams invading businesses and homes, and numerous other Abuses and Usurpations.

But now we’re getting leftist anarchy and riots – with mindless, incoherent radicals smashing Portland storefronts, beating a Chicago motorist, and pummeling a ninth grade Woodside, CA Trump supporter.

Amid it all, the epitome of nihilist, watermelon environmentalist, criminal, sore-loser fury is raging south of Bismarck, North Dakota, where thousands of “peaceful protesters” are camping illegally on federal and private lands, “venting their anger” over the Dakota Access Pipe Line.

This $3.8-billion, 1,172-mile, state-of-the-art, 30-inch conduit will carry 470,000 barrels of oil daily from the state’s Bakken oil fields to Illinois. It’s about 85% complete, and the only segment left to be finished in North Dakota is a 1,000-foot passage under Lake Oahe, a manmade reservoir on the Missouri River. DAPL runs parallel to the existing Northern Border natural gas pipeline, through the same area and under the lake.

The pipeline would replace 700 railroad tanker cars or 2,000 semi-trailer highway tanker trucks per day. It has created thousands of manufacturing and construction jobs. Bakken’s light, sweet crude oil replaces imports, fuels our vehicles, powers our economy, and provides raw materials for many essential products.

Since it is underground, once it is installed and grasses are planted, the pipeline will be invisible except for occasional pumping stations, valves and other facilities. Modern metals, warning systems, automatic shutoff valves, 24/7/365 monitoring and other safeguards minimize the risk of spills  – and nearly 140 revisions rerouted the DAPL around populated areas and sensitive ecological, archaeological, sacred and historic sites. The pipeline is 99.98% on private land and is covered by easements and other agreements.

All these and other issues were addressed repeatedly and thoughtfully during a three-year, 389-meeting review and approval process. Landowners, communities, environmentalists and citizens provided input, and 55 Native American groups were consulted. Prominent in their refusal to participate were the Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation is a half-mile from Lake Oahe, where the pipeline is set to cross.

Only now are Standing Rock tribal leaders and members voicing opposition. Not surprisingly, they have been joined by Indians from across America, and by a motley assortment of activists, agitators and anarchists whom friendly media and politicians insist on praising as “peaceful resisters” against an industrial intrusion that “threatens” the climate, tribal culture, drinking water, historic artifacts and sacred sites. A United Nations “special rappoteur” on human rights claims law enforcement officials are using “violent” tactics against arrested protesters and subjecting them to “inhuman and degrading” conditions!

These claims are “tonka chesli” – Lakota for BS.

These thousands of militants are trespassing. They’ve wiped out forage that ranchers were depending on to feed their cattle and bison during fall and winter months. They blockade roads and rail lines, set fires to make passage impossible, and harass reporters who question their actions. One tried to shoot a deputy. They have burned bridges, destroyed millions of dollars of construction equipment, chased livestock until they lose their calves or die of exhaustion – and killed, maimed or eaten cattle, horses and domesticated buffalo. They’ve promised far more destructive actions, and even issued death threats against their critics.

A favorite tactic employs “peaceful dissidents” and “prayer groups” to block and distract ranchers and sheriff’s deputies from an area, while others destroy nearby fence wire and posts. One rancher told me repairing just the fence on the ranch where they graze buffalo will cost at least $300,000 and weeks of hard work. The anarchists obviously don’t care about innocent people who are caught in the middle.

Other ranchers’ lost forage and animals, time and fuel spent on repairs, and other expenses will cost well over $500,000. No one has offered any compensation, even though the militants have millions of dollars.

Washington Times journalist Valerie Richardson reports that, as of November 1, the militants’ Sacred Stone camp alone raised $1.3 million for supplies on GoFundMe and $1.2 million on FundRazr for legal defense. The Red Warrior Camp quickly collected $142,000 via GoFundMe and $105,000 in legal defense cash on IndieGogo, even though the Standing Rock council is frustrated and wants them gone.

Rumors run rampant that the “protesters” are also raking in bundles of welfare checks, plus “charitable and educational contributions” from “progressive” billionaires like Tom Steyer (coal), George Soros (currency speculation), Warren Buffett (railroads and tanker cars); outfits they fund, such as the Tides Foundation, 350.org, EarthJustice and Indigenous Environmental Network; and various Russian, Saudi and other foreign sources that would like to keep US oil and gas locked up.

Perhaps the abundant cash will attract corporate and pro bono lawyers, legal foundations and attorneys general who can freeze the assets and pursue individual or joint and several liability claims, plus punitive damages, to compensate ranchers, other locals and companies – and dissuade future lawlessness.

Last January, 26 peaceful ranchers who encamped on federal wildlife refuge property in Oregon were arrested, one was shot and killed, and the survivors were charged with, tried for (and found not guilty of) theft, conspiracy and weapons violations. Many wonder why these North Dakota militants and criminals are getting a free pass, glowing press coverage, and millions of dollars from crime-financing enablers.

The nearly completed DAPL has to cross the river somewhere and will pose the same low pollution risks wherever it goes. But it will be built with the utmost care, with the best technologies and materials.

So what is actually driving these destructive, vindictive, violent protests against this convenient “poster child” pipeline?

* True-believers are obsessed with “dangerous manmade climate change” – to justify and obscure their real agenda: a new world economic order to replace capitalism, global wealth redistribution, and UN control of development, livelihoods and living standards, for rich, poor and emerging nations alike.

* The “keep it in the ground” anti-hydrocarbon movement prefers blanketing the USA and planet with billions of solar panels, wind turbines and biofuel fields, to produce expensive, subsidized, unreliable energy – while killing birds, bats and other wildlife by the millions – rather than producing affordable energy-dense fossil fuels from holes in the ground, and transporting them by pipeline. (Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II supports much greater emphasis on renewable energy.)

* Radical elements among Native Americans (and Canadian Indigenous Peoples) want to control the land, water, energy and lives of white people whose predecessors took their ancestral lands. Their feelings are understandable. But imagine the chaos this would cause and the precedent their success would set for Europe, Latin America, China, Hawaii, the Middle East and beyond, as PC politics rewrite history.

* The anarchists think they have a right to vilify and void laws, processes, approvals and property rights – even threaten lives. 90% of those arrested have been out-of-state agitators, and many get paid to raise hell.

* And of course, they are outraged, inconsolable and defiant over Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump.

They have no grasp of basic facts. Pipelines are safer than trucks or rail cars. This low-pressure line is state-of-the-art and will be monitored constantly and inspected regularly. High-cost renewable energy impacts small businesses, hospitals, blue-collar workers, and poor and minority families the hardest. And President Obama’s refusal to accept a court order or speak out against the crime is fueling the insanity.

Hopefully, President Trump, governors, AGs, other elected officials, and publicly spirited lawyers and judges will do the right thing: shut these anarchists down, compensate ranchers and other victims – and award punitive damages against the Big Green operatives who have caused so much damage, under the guise of freedom of speech (for them only) and phony concern for Native culture and the environment.

Then finish the pipeline, renew our focus on energy we can count on, and put America back to work.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and other books on the environment.

The Obama war on pipelines

Expedite wind and solar – but block coal, oil, gas, pipelines, jobs and economic recovery

Paul Driessen

“This is not the same industry we had 15 years ago,” Natural Gas Supply Association VP Jennifer Fordham said recently. That’s an understatement. The oil, petrochemical and manufacturing industries are also far different from those of 15 years ago. Together, they’ve created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and generated countless billions of dollars in economic activity. No thanks to the Obama Administration.

From EPA to Interior and even the Energy Department, the Administration continues to display a strong animosity toward fossil fuels. Its war on coal has hounded mines, power plants, jobs and communities. Its opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has thwarted the creation of tens of thousands of construction jobs. Its bans on leasing, drilling and hydraulic fracturing on federal onshore and offshore lands have caused a 6% drop in oil production from those lands and a 28% plunge in natural gas output – costing thousands of jobs and tens of billions in bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues to the U.S. Treasury.

Nevertheless, you’d think Obama regulators and policy makers would support natural gas pipelines. Even the Sierra Club promoted this fuel as a “clean alternative to coal” just a couple years ago. But no.

The fracking revolution on America’s state and private lands has unleashed a gusher of mammoth proportions. In just six years, 2008-2014, it has generated a 58% increase in oil production (from 5 million to 8 million barrels per day) – and a 21% rise in natural gas production. By the end of this year, U.S. crude oil production is projected to reach 9 million bpd. In the Marcellus Shale region, gas production is expected to reach 16 billion cubic feet a day, twice the volume of only two years ago.

However, this miraculous cornucopia is overwhelming the nation’s existing delivery systems and, far from striving to eliminate the bottleneck, the Obama Administration is creating new ones.

Not having the Keystone pipeline to transport Upper Midwest crude to refineries has forced oil companies to move that oil by train. Rail accidents have caused spills and deaths, but the regulatory focus has been on stronger tanker cars, with insufficient attention paid to track maintenance and safety – or pipelines.

Insufficient natural gas pipelines mean producers cannot deliver this vital fuel to homes, hospitals, factories and electricity generating plants, or to petrochemical plants that use it as a feed stock for literally thousands of products. Pipeline companies are clamoring for construction permits.

With supplies rising, prices for oil and natural gas are declining. Global crude oil prices have fallen more than $20 a barrel and are cheaper in the United States than in Europe. Natural gas prices in the Marcellus area have been about half the U.S. benchmark price, which is below $4 per thousand cubic feet (mcf), compared to prices as high as $9 or even $20 per mcf (or Btu) in Europe and Asia. As a result, despite a clear need for gas, some drillers are re-examining their Marcellus plans, and an estimated 1,750 Pennsylvania natural gas wells are not currently producing because pipeline connections are not available.

Natural gas pipelines also ensure energy conservation and reduce air pollution. A North Dakota pipeline would collect gas produced with crude oil, eliminating the need to “flare” the gas. But permit delays, largely by federal agencies, mean enough gas to heat 160,000 homes goes up in smoke every month.

Why are pipelines lagging behind production? First, pipeline companies build new capacity only when there is a demonstrated need. Second, and most important, pipeline permit approvals are being delayed.

A 2013 INGAA Foundation study found that the number of interstate natural gas pipeline authorizations issued more than 90 days after federal environmental assessments were completed climbed from 8% to 28% since Congress passed the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Rather than streamlining permits, as Congress had intended, the law had the opposite effect. It removed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s ability to keep project reviews on a strict schedule, allowed both state and federal agencies to drag their heels on pipeline permitting, and opened the door to more objections by environmental pressure groups.

Authorization delays were caused by conflicts among federal agencies, as well as inadequate or under-trained agency staff, applicant changes to projects requiring additional or revised environmental review (often in response to environmentalist or other third-party protests and demands), site-access problems, and FERC and other agency reviews of requirements for mitigating asserted environmental impacts, INGAA concluded. Increased partisanship at FERC has also increased delays.

The Obama Army Corps of Engineers slowed pipeline permits by citing the Clean Water Act. Its Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) cited the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to justify slow-walking permits. Its Environmental Protection Agency wants to control all “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), so as to exert regulatory authority over activities on federal, state and private lands – including drilling, fracking and pipelines – in the name of sustainability, climate change prevention and other eco-mantras.

The MBTA bans the “taking” (harassing, harming, killing, capturing or wounding) of migratory birds, their nests and eggs related to natural gas pipelines and other projects. Because building a pipeline requires clearing a right-of-way, excavating and other activities that could affect wildlife for a short time, a permit is required. But native grasses soon cover the route, and state-of-the-art steel, valves and safety features greatly reduce the likelihood of ruptures and spills, compared to earlier generation pipelines.

And yet the Obama FWS drags its feet on pipeline permits – while approving numerous renewable energy projects beloved by the President and his “green” base, including massive wind turbines that slaughter millions of eagles, hawks, bats and other threatened, endangered and migratory species every year.

The FWS also blessed the huge Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on the Nevada/California border. It uses 300,000 mirrors to reflect the sun’s rays onto three 40-story water-filled towers to produce steam and generate electricity. Eagles, owls, falcons and other birds that fly between the solar panels and towers become “streamers,” because the 500-degree heat turns them into smoking, disintegrating corpses as they plummet to earth. There’s little left to find or bury – making it easy for Big Solar regulators, operators and promoters to claim “minimal” wildlife impacts. In fact, during the Ivanpah project’s environmental review, the FWS focused on desert tortoises and missed the bird crematorium issue.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management unveiled a sweeping plan that would revise longstanding resource management plans, to install buffer zones around “sensitive” Gunnison sage grouse habitats, impose seasonal restrictions on oil and gas drilling and livestock grazing, and close roads and trails wherever grouse are present. But in the midst of this effort, BLM and various state governments are also working to streamline “eco-friendly” solar, wind, geothermal and transmission line projects that they claim will reduce “dangerous” carbon dioxide emissions. Natural gas would do that, too, of course.

Natural gas is clean, affordable and reliable – if it can reach consumers through pipelines, which are the safest form of energy transportation. Unfortunately, the Obama principle seems to be: If it requires subsidies, raises energy prices, costs jobs, impacts thousands of acres, and butchers birds and bats – expedite approval. If it generates royalty and tax revenues, produces reliable, affordable energy, creates jobs, and has minimal impacts on endangered and migratory species – delay or ban it. Talk about crazy.

The administration’s fixation on ideological environmentalism is not helping the environment, the economy, or consumers. It is a political ploy designed to garner liberal votes and rake in more money from campaign donors like Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund manager who got his money from coal.

America needs more pipelines. The Obama Administration needs to let industry build them. Perhaps a reconstituted Senate (with Harry Reid as Minority Leader) can lead the way. America will prosper!

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the save-the-Earth money machine.