No one knows

FROM-The Oregonian

How many jobs from Oregon's green energy incentives? No one knows

By Harry Esteve,

Labor leader Tom Chamberlain decided some basic research was in order before the Oregon AFL-CIO could lend its support to the state's increasingly expensive subsidies for green energy projects.

"We wanted to know what we were getting for the money," he says. "How many jobs? What do they pay? Like any tax incentive program, you want to make sure you're getting bang for your buck."

Instead of numbers, Chamberlain says, he got the equivalent of a blank stare from the Department of Energy, which administers and approves the subsidies.

That was two years ago.

Today, little has changed. Despite claims by supporters that the subsidies have led to "thousands" of jobs, no one can say with any certainty what impact the Business Energy Tax Credit, or BETC, has had on the state's stubbornly high unemployment rate.

To get a better handle on the link between the incentives and jobs, The Oregonian examined Energy Department records, talked to economists and looked at individual projects that received the incentives. Among the conclusions:

With the exception of solar equipment manufacturing companies, such as SolarWorld and Sanyo, the state has no firm data on the number of jobs that can be attributed to the subsidies.

 The subsidized cost of each job varies dramatically. For example, Horizon Wind Energy received $11 million in tax credits for an eastern Oregon wind farm that, after construction, created 36 full-time maintenance and operation jobs. Solaicx, a Portland solar manufacturer, got $9 million in tax credits and employs 127 full-time staff.

 In some cases, the state has spent millions of tax dollars and gotten only a handful -- or no -- jobs in return because the companies didn't perform as billed, were sold and shut down, or went bankrupt and folded. Examples include Cascade Grains, a biofuel start-up that received $12 million in state subsidies before going bankrupt and out of business, and Reklaim Technologies, which got $3.4 million in state subsidies to recycle tires into oil. After two years, the recycling plant employs eight people, according to the Port of Morrow, and has yet to deliver a marketable product.

Meet the lobbyist who turns 'green' into greenbacks

FROM-Washington Examiner

By: Timothy P. Carney

Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.

K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.

McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.

Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.

Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.

McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.

Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.

With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.

"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.

Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.

The case of one McBee solar-panel client, Solyndra, helps illustrate how the green-energy game is as perilous for taxpayers as it is lucrative for lobbyists.

The 2005 energy bill created a new Department of Energy loan guarantee program for renewable energy facilities. In order to protect taxpayers, the 2005 law required from the beneficiary a sort of "down payment," to cover the risk of default.

But the 2009 stimulus bill removed that requirement, allowing DOE to give out loan guarantees without the "down payment." Energy lobbyists on Capitol Hill say that this provision, which opened the spigot on the DOE loans, was written by Steve McBee.

"We definitely were pretty involved in that," said Ryan Hubbard, a McBee spokesman, referring generally to the stimulus' green subsidies. When I asked specifically if McBee helped lower the bar for loan guarantees, Hubbard said he would check, but then didn't get back with an answer.

The very first company to take advantage of the newer rules was Solyndra, a California company that received a $535 million loan guarantee to build a second factory to make its cylinder-shaped solar panels.

Obama, Vice President Biden, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu all have visited Solyndra's main plant, saying the loan guarantee would generate 1,000 new jobs. Obama declared last May, "The foundation of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra."

But soon things turned south for Solyndra, and rather than adding 1,000 new jobs at its new plant in California, Solyndra decided to close its old plant (also in the Golden State), and downsize its labor force.

One problem: Solyndra spends much more per watt than other solar panel makers -- and don't even compare the company's costs with those of coal-fired plants, which don't need direct government subsidies to get by.

House Republicans are investigating whether anything improper occurred in DOE's award of the grant to Solyndra. My colleague David Freddoso last year chalked the company's subsidy successes up to lobbying.

On Jan. 30, 2009, 10 days into Obama's presidency and in the midst of the stimulus debate, Solyndra hired McBee Strategic as a lobbyist on "Implementation of Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Programs," according to McBee's lobbying filing.

It looks like McBee lobbied to loosen the rules on subsidies, then got his clients the first subsidy.

Just because McBee and clients get rich off of green regulation doesn't mean they're bad. But it's important to remember that the people shaping these laws aren't just in it for the polar bears.

Green-energy plant sucks up subsidies, then goes bust

FROM-Washington Examiner


 Timothy P. Carney

To turn wood chips into ethanol fuel, George W. Bush's Department of Energy in February 2007 announced a $76 million grant to Range Fuels for a cutting-edge refinery. A few months later, the refinery opened in the piney woods of Treutlen County, Ga., as the taxpayers of Georgia piled on another $6 million. In 2008, the ethanol plant was the first beneficiary of the Biorefinery Assistance Program, pocketing a loan for $80 million guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayers.
Last month, the refinery closed down, having failed to squeeze even a drop of ethanol out of its pine chips.

The Soperton, Ga., ethanol plant is another blemish on ethanol's already tarnished image, but more broadly, it is cautionary tale about the elusive nature of "green jobs" and the folly of the government's efforts at "investing" -- as President Obama puts it -- in new technologies.

Late in the Bush administration, corn-based ethanol started to get a bad rap. Corn for ethanol was crowding out other crops, and food prices were soaring. Mexicans rioted as tortilla prices spiked. So Bush started talking up "advanced biofuels" including "cellulosic ethanol": roughly, ethanol distilled from plants that were not also food products. Bush mentioned wood chips and switchgrass in two consecutive State of the Union addresses

Georgia politicians saw an opportunity here. "The Saudi Arabia of Pine Trees" became an unofficial state motto among Peach State politicians, and Gov. Sonny Perdue declared, "I'm confident the bioenergy industry and sector is going to be a cornerstone of the new Georgia."

Amid all this hopeful talk by politicians, there were naysayers among the scientists. One Nobel Prize-winning physicist talked to the New York Times about these startups trying to turn logging waste into fuel. "You have to look at starts with a grain of salt, especially starts where they say, 'It's around the corner, and by the way, can you pay half the bill?' "

But that same scientist, Steven Chu, is now the secretary of energy, and his Energy Department has recently offered a loan guarantee of as much as $1 billion to a Texas company looking to squeeze fuel out of wood.

The Texas company, KiOR, isn't trying to produce ethanol and methanol as Range Fuels is doing in Soperton. KiOR's end product would be synthetic crude oil, which can do everything ethanol can do (except spike a punch) and much more. This could be part of why the Soperton plant is having trouble finding new investors: Why turn wood chips into white lightning when you can turn them into black gold?

If KiOR's efforts produce a useful fuel, politicians will take credit. But the fact that it has apparently supplanted subsidized wood-to-ethanol makes you wonder what will supplant wood-to-crude before it ever gets to market.

More to the point, how much private investment capital has been dragged to useless fuels because of the promise of subsidies? Range Fuels alone attracted more than $100 million in private investment. Without subsidies, that money would have gone to projects whose promise was not taxpayer money but market demand -- that is, somewhere useful. Our "green" subsidies could be postponing the day we get an alternative to foreign oil.

Range Fuels is a politically connected, mostly through its founder, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Khosla has given more the $350,000 to federal candidates and campaign committees in recent years, a vast majority going to Democrats. In his home state of California, Khosla has famously and openly bankrolled ballot measures to direct state funding to his own "green" ventures or use regulation to make his investments more valuable.

Range Fuels' lobbying budget is small, having spent only about $50,000 over the past three years. Their lobbyists have been former top staffers for powerful Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Ron Wyden, and Max Baucus.

Despite these Democratic ties, it's been Republicans who have lathered the subsidies on Soperton and celebrated them -- Gov. Perdue, President Bush, Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss. On the GOP side, Range Fuels' most politically connected asset may be the aptly named Pat Wood. Wood is a revolving-door veteran -- he's the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, having won that job on the recommendation of then-Enron Chairman Ken Lay.

Just as Enron sucked up subsidies before collapsing, the wood-to-ethanol project in Georgia is yet another dog in Uncle Sam's "investment" portfolio.

Green Jobs Are Not Evergreen Jobs

FROM-Townhall


By Debra J. Saunders


After receiving at least $43 million in aid from the state of Massachusetts, Evergreen Solar announced last month that it would be closing its manufacturing plant in Devens, Mass., laying off its 800 workers and moving its manufacturing operations to China.
Warning: These are the "green jobs" that President Obama has touted as part of his "winning the future" agenda.

The problem isn't that Obama wants to direct federal dollars toward research for alternative energy. It is in the national interest to have affordable options when oil sources are depleted.

The problem is that Obama thinks that green jobs are the answer to the anemic economy recovery. And he clings to that belief in the face of contrary evidence.

Last May, the president came to solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra in Fremont, Calif., to celebrate a new plant -- creating 3,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent workers. President Obama exclaimed, "The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra."

Within months, Solyndra, which has yet to turn a profit, announced that it was canceling the expansion. Solyndra, the San Jose Mercury News reported, has shifted more than half of its production to -- you guessed it -- China.

At best, you can describe Obamaland's choice of venue as bad advance work.

Michael El-Hillow, Evergreen Solar's chief executive, explained in a statement the reason for his company's move: "While the United States and other western industrial economies are beneficiaries of rapidly declining installation costs of solar energy, we expect the United States will continue to be at a disadvantage from a manufacturing standpoint."

Evergreen is -- this month anyway -- the third-largest solar panel manufacturer in the United States. The Massachusetts plant opened in 2008 with much fanfare and generous taxpayer assistance. But just one year later, The New York Times reported, company suits were talking to Chinese officials, who could offer cheaper labor -- average monthly wages below $300 as opposed to $5,400 in the Bay State -- sweetheart loans and other incentives.

Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser saw Evergreen leave Massachusetts and opined in The New York Times that while he believed investing in green technology, "(I)t always was a mistake to think that clean energy was going to be a jobs bonanza."

And: "We shouldn't pretend that cheaper solar energy will end up employing millions of our less-skilled citizens."

This leaves American solons with two choices: Keep feeding the meter -- or cut your losses.

The high cost of subsidizing wind and solar power should seal the deal. According to the California Energy Commission, the cost of photovoltaic solar electricity is about 26 cents per kilowatt hour, as opposed to 13 cents for electricity powered by natural gas.

With the unemployment rate at 9 percent, Washington should be looking to create jobs that aren't going to run to China. Or, as Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, told The New York Times, "If the president really were serious about job creation, he would be working with us to develop American oil and gas by American workers for American consumers."

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Steven F. Hayward likes to ask people which state has the lowest unemployment rate. The answer is North Dakota, with an unemployment rate of 3.8 percent. "The reason is they've had a huge oil and gas boom," Hayward explained. They've tripled their oil output.

As the price of oil spills over the $100-per-barrel mark, Washington ought to reconsider the "green jobs" approach. As Hayward noted, "Brown energy creates jobs and prosperity."

Labor Department awards millions of dollars in college grants for scarce ‘green jobs’

FROM-The Daily Caller

By Matthew Boyle

The Department of Labor has issued several million dollars in grants to community colleges and specialized universities around the country to train students for “green jobs” in renewable energy fields. While the grants are supposed to fund the future “rank and file” workers of the renewable energy industry, there’s a glaring problem the DOL seemingly overlooked — those jobs are either non-existent or scarce.

A former college official who has applied for these grants and has in-depth experience working with the Department of Labor and the Department of Education told The Daily Caller that colleges will often fudge expected job placement numbers just to get extra government cash.

“On ground level – it’s a real struggle – my grant writers came to me and honestly said, ‘I don’t have any job projections, what do I tell them?’ You do your best to make up job numbers,” said the former college official, who wished to remain anonymous to prevent jeopardizing future job opportunities. “But it’s not like lying – it’s just guessing what we might be able to do in a best case scenario, but you don’t say it’s not likely for many jobs.”

The former college official told TheDC that, though his college received five different “green jobs” grants from the Department of Labor to train students, no program has been set up yet.

“I can tell you, one, at least at my college, we’ve been very slow to get these grants underway,” he said. “In terms of those programs going, what’s the rate of success on these programs? I don’t think the DOL could produce very strong job numbers on these programs.”

Bill Wilson of not-for-profit group Americans for Limited Government told TheDC these programs and grants are nothing more than a collection of buzzwords, as they don’t serve any practical purpose.

“Congress needs to cut these vanity ‘green job’ promotion projects out of the budget, it is a waste of money and an insult to the American taxpayer to fund these thinly veiled environmental political rallies,” Wilson said in an e-mail.

It’s not like these grants are being given to research and development programs at big name schools focusing on developing new renewable energy technology, either. They’re being given to universities and community colleges to train students in technical or associate degree programs to work in yet-to-be-developed fields. Many of the grants are promised to colleges that pledged to push “green jobs” or “new energy technology,” but don’t go into much more detail about how they plan to go about doing that.

For instance, Calhoun Community College in Decatur, Ala., received more than $3.4 million to help train 175 people, both those who are unemployed and high school students, in “energy-efficiency technology.” That translates into more than $20,000 per person, and many of the trainees likely won’t be able to secure jobs simply because there aren’t very many companies in the U.S. hiring for what they are being trained to do.

Then, there’s Kern Community College District in Bakersfield, Calif., which was granted about $2.7 million for similar training programs for 650 people. There’s also the Shenandoah Valley Workforce Investment Board, Inc., in Harrisonburg, Va., which got about $5 million to help 1,010 “unemployed and dislocated workers” learn “current and future employer needs” in green technology manufacturing, solar and wind energy support and efficiency assessment and retrofitting for existing energy consumers.

The former college official told TheDC that, though solar and wind are emerging energy sources and though some people around the country are interested in making their homes or businesses “greener,” he thinks there isn’t enough business to support the people being trained to go into these industries. Colleges, he said, are simply incapable of turning down free government money.

Obama's Solar Nightmare

FROM-American Thinker

By Ed Lasky

The Democrats have been busy the last two years, and not just reengineering the healthcare industry, restructuring the auto sector, assaulting Wall Street and the financial sector, harming our public finances.  They have also been trying to transform America's energy industry at our expense. This is Barack Obama at his worst -- picking losers and winners by personal whim, donations for dollars deals, and ideological zeal.

Who have been the losers and who have been the winners?  And have the winners just been taking the taxpayers for a ride while their guy has been driving the bus -- with taxpayers sitting in the back?

The Obama administration has tried to kill off the oil industry. Offshore moratoriums have been unilaterally imposed by executive orders and justified using scientific panel studies that were misrepresented-if not distorted- by the administration. The drilling permitting process has been afflicted with sclerosis. Federal lands are becoming less and less available for development.

Obama does not like carbon; he boasted during the campaign that he would bankrupt coal power plants and that his policies would necessarily boost the price of power. Those words were ignored by much of the media, in thrall to the man they so wanted to win. When the rapture swept journalists into ecstasy who cared about little details here and there about Obama's agenda?

He tried and failed to get a cap and trade bill through Congress. He warned that if that effort failed he would do another end run around Congress and rely on his Environmental  Protection Agency to do his dirty work.

Who knows? Maybe Obama has personalized his gripes and made them the basis of public policy. We know how he feels about George Bush and Dick Cheney -- both with strong ties to the oil industry. Maybe he just doesn't care for the South where much of our carbon wealth is found -- a Republican redoubt that he may have just written off as a political wasteland for him.

Hence, gas prices approaching $4 dollars a gallon -- and this is not yet the summer driving season that typically boosts gas prices as demand increases.

This price hike may make New York Times columnist Tom Friedman gleeful. He considers high priced gas (and Chinese authoritarianism) the answer to all ills. He writes column after column on these topics from the baronial splendor of his homes (here is a photo of one of them; he earned his fortune, by the way, by marrying it). Undoubtedly, he salves his conscience regarding the carbon footprints of his homes with checks to buy carbon credits -- and writes more columns castigating us for our addiction to carbon.

But I digress.

How else have the Democrats been trying to change our power industry? By the old-fashioned way: changing the rules of the game (as noted above) and then using our tax dollars to enrich green schemers. The grand champion of spending boosts by Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress has been a 1014% boost in spending for the "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program."  Then there is something called the Green Jobs Labor Fund-which did not even exist prior to 2009 and has received hundreds of millions of dollars.

But wait...there is more.

Green Manna

Breaking the Obama Code: The Green Money Machine

FROM-American Thinker

By Patti Villacorta

As a few dozen dot com billionaires gathered in a Palo Alto living room one evening in early 2007, then-Senator Obama rallied potential new donors over the speakerphone. After the call, the host John Roos, a prominent lawyer, emphasized what most of his guests already knew. The clean-energy revolution was gaining momentum. The election in 2008 would be the critical moment. The ethics-based green revolution could be passed into law and Obama was their guy. Roos raised much money and opened many doors for Obama that evening. In May 2009, despite initial criticism from Japan, Roos was given the plum appointment of U.S. Ambassador.
Roos, who had handpicked his guest list carefully, was a kingmaker in the progressive, green, and Bay Area billionaires club. The polls showing America's rising concerns about ocean levels reflected the hard work of Silicon Valley hedge fund managers and venture capitalists.

The Obama Exploratory team had formed and the candidacy announcement was scheduled for early February. But Jude Barry, a political strategist and software programmer, wasn't one to hedge his bets. In late December of 2006 he quietly filed paperwork and created Obama for America Draft Committee (FEC ID #C00431130).

Jude Barry is one of many Howard Dean loyalists who helped Obama win the White House. Once labeled as a "self-styled Machiavellian apparatchik" by the San Jose political press, Barry helped develop Dean's net roots campaign that unraveled with a scream in Iowa. Still, the political landscape had been changed forever by Barry and fellow Deaniacs including Christopher Edley, UC Berkeley Law School Dean, Patrick Gaspard, Obama's political director, Jeremy Ben Ami, former Clinton staffer and founder of the anti-Israel J Street, and assistant attorney general Ron Weich.

Co-founder of Catapult Strategies with Dean Campaign manager Joe Trippi, Barry became well known in Silicon Valley political circles where he grew up and attended Catholic school with another assistant attorney general: Tony West. West is the Bay Area lawyer recently revealed as defense attorney for American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

Barry collected six $5000 donations from 12/28/06 and 12/30/06, including one from eBay millionaire Tom Adams III. At the same time Steven Churchwell, a partner at DLA Piper LLC's Government Affairs Group in Sacramento, listed himself as PAC Treasurer. Churchwell's bio states he "assists clients through the challenging waters of California government and politics." Areas of concentration include Ballot measures, Internal Investigations, and PAC regulations.

Obama's courtship with the high-tech crowd had begun back in early 2005. Within weeks of his swearing-in, the new United States Senator launched his Hopefund Pac then flew west to mingle. At the time, Jude Barry was managing Obama-backer Steve Westley's gubernatorial primary against Phil Angelides, the national chair of the Apollo Alliance. Other Apollo Board members include Dan Reicher, Google's Director of Climate Change, Robert Redford, and Van Jones, Obama's ex-Green Czar. Jones worked on Arianna Huffington's brief run for governor.

Obama scored big. Eileen Chamberlain-Donahue, wife of eBay CEO John Donahue took a liking to Obama. She went on to become Chairwoman of the National Women for Obama Finance Committee, and won an invitation to watch his Denver speech from a luxury suite with Penny Pritzker and Oprah.

By November 2006 Hopefund had raised $2.5 million. Some of Obama's early donors include the Warren Buffetts, co-founder of Espirit clothing company Susie Buell, Steven Spielberg, Attorney General Eric Holder, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, Christina Romer, the Chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Craig's List CEO Craig Newmark, David Geffen, as well as Jon Gruber, the MIT economist criticized recently for failing to disclose HHS consultancy contracts.

Edward Robinson's piece on fundraising scene in the wealthy Bay Area points out:

Venture capitalists ... are struggling with an investing climate that's the gloomiest since the bust of 2000 and '01. In the first half of 2008, only five venture-backed companies went public ... the poorest showing in five years. ``Almost everybody who's been in the Valley for any period of time is pursuing cleantech now,'' says Dixon Doll. .

That's where VCs see Obama coming in. In his policy proposal, the senator pledged to invest $150 billion over 10 years to develop solar farms in the Sunbelt, plug-in hybrid cars that get 150 miles per gallon (64 kilometers per liter) and clean coal that doesn't spew carbon.

Obama knew he needed California to win and green billionaires knew they needed Obama. A new loophole, the Unauthorized Independent Expenditure (IE), could make it happen. IEs can spend and raise unlimited money as long as there is no coordination with the candidate. An IE at its most brazen is SEIU's Committee on Political Education (SEIU COPE), formed in order to raise $26,009,685.53 in support of Obama, and $3,163,276.29 to oppose McCain.

The 2008 report "Independent Expenditures: The Giant Gorilla in Campaign Finance," reveals million dollar contributions and multi-million dollar expenditures are common. Californians for a Better Government (CPG), the highly controversial IE formed for the Angelides' campaign collected $10,015,643 with $8.7 million coming from one pocket: Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulous and his daughter Eleni Tsakopolous-Kournalakis. Married to the President Emeritus of The Washington Monthly, Ms Tsakopolous-Kournalakis now serves as Ambassador to Hungary.

CPG hired Steve Churchwell as Treasurer just as Obama for America Draft Committee would a few months later. Churchwell landed at the center of a probe involving incorporation irregularities. The Barry/Churchwell team continues making news. Along with a cryptography and electronic signature expert, they recently unveiled Verafirma Inc, then filed suit requiring San Mateo Superior Court to accept electronic signatures on an initiative petition.

Although Angelides lost to Schwarzenegger, he received a campaign donation from Paul Pelosi (Nancy's husband). In January 2009 Angelides delivered billions in stimulus money for Apollo's big, "new" green revolution initiative. First unveiled at a 2006 Conference co- sponsored with Bob Borosage, Angelides' friend from Jesse Jackson's campaign, Apollo's green revolution themed conference featured Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Obama and others vowing to take the party back from the centrist DLC.

In May 2009, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid selected Angelides to chair their Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) tasked with investigating the cause of the 2007-2010 financial crisis. The Angelides pick prompted complaints of conflicts-of-interest mainly around issues like pension funds. Strangely, his seat on the Board of the Climate Prosperity Alliance (CPA) went unmentioned.

CPA describes itself as a "global network of financiers, businesses, economic development authorities, scientists and NGO's." Marc Weiss, CPA Chair, served as Special Assistant to Andrew Cuomo and Henry Cisneros under Bill Clinton. CPA endorses the expansive policies of the U.N. General Assembly's 2009 'Global Green New Deal.' CPA also advocates $1 trillion of green investments per year in order to "re-deploy assets" and solve worldwide financial instability."

Weeks before falsified documents surfaced confirming global warming as little more than another far-left power grab, a CPA report celebrated $1,248,740,645,930.00 invested since 2007. The monies came from finance institutes and corporations in North America, Europe, China, India, Japan and Brazil.

Welcome to the ethics-based global revolution. The tangle of corrupt, hypocritical liars is made far worse by the growing realization of just how badly America was duped.

More...

Green money, not green jobs

FROM-Washington Examiner

By: Star Parker

Van Jones is back, reconstructed and rehabilitated.

Jones, recall, departed from his White House job as "green jobs czar" after publicity about his association with a "9/11 truther" organization, which alleges complicity of the Bush administration with the Sept. 11 attacks.

He was already a lightening rod, having characterized President George W. Bush as a "crackhead," using profanity to describe Republicans, and offering gems like blaming "white polluters and white environmentalists" for "steering poison" to minority communities.

But, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel understands that power brokers should "never waste a crisis," those on the Left grasp that you never waste an asset like a black self-described communist from the 1990s with an Ivy League degree and a best-selling "green jobs" book.

So now Jones has new jobs at Princeton University and Washington's Center for American Progress. And, to seal the public rehabilitation, he will be awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Image Award and has been called by NAACP President Benjamin Jealous a "national treasure."

Central to Jones' work will, of course, be the continuation of his "green jobs" agenda. The Center for American Progress announcement says he'll be a senior fellow and leader with its Green Opportunity Initiative.

CAP was founded by rich liberals who thought the Left needed a think tank as conservatives have (as they concluded they needed talk radio and hence founded the now defunct Air America).

One of the major sources of funding of CAP was Marion and Herbert Sandler, who got rich building Golden West Financial selling adjustable-rate mortgages with teaser rates to unsophisticated buyers. Yes, the very greedy kind of businesspeople that the Obama administration would have us believe caused our current economic crisis.

But the beauty of the Left is that facts will never get in the way of ideology.

The recent scandal associated with the use of research data at the Climate Research Unit in England -- which has been essentially the headquarters of global warming research -- has brought claims of man-made climate change into serious doubt.

Sober minds realize that this must be a time for reassessment about assumptions driving the belief that irreversible climate change has occurred and that this alleged change is caused by human activity.

As expressed in an editorial in Britain's Prospect Magazine, "We cannot rely on highly imperfect climate models as a basis for policy initiatives that cost billions and change how we live."

But this hasn't put a dent in the green jobs movement. President Obama continues to push this idea as central to economic recovery, as he did the other day speaking to chief executive officers at the Business Roundtable in Washington.

The love affair on the Left with "green jobs" is, of course, about ideology, which is why facts are irrelevant. It is another excuse to grow government and bring European socialism to America. What could be a better opportunity than to claim that the planet's atmosphere is now out of whack because of capitalism?

Jones is important because he uses environmentalism as a new platform to welcome poor blacks onto the government plantation.

This is important spin because poor folks do have common sense. In a Zogby poll done after the presidential election, 73 percent of blacks said they were opposed to taxing fossil fuels to promote alternative energy.

The Carter administration invested $2.1 billion in the Great Plains Coal Gasification Plant to convert coal to gas. The result -- zero. Federal government spending since 1961 on "advanced energy technologies and basic energy science research" totals $187 billion with hardly anything to show.

Poor folks don't need socialism or green jobs. They need green money. They'll get more of it being free, going to school, getting married and going to work.





More...

Just Call Him the Green Pitchfork Czar

FROM- The Corner

[Andy McCarthy]

At Hot Air, Captain Ed Morrissey offers an astute comparison of the mainstream media’s dereliction in the matter of “Truther Van” Jones to its similar non-performance four years ago in the matter of CNN honcho Eason Jordan. As Ed observes, in the Jordan case, it could be said that the media was protecting one of its own. With Van Jones, they're still protecting their own — it's just that they're now de facto part of the Obama administration.

Leaving aside the obvious reasons to be disgusted by the dying legacy press here, the Times is insipid in reporting Sunday that "Mr. Jones did not go through the traditional vetting process for administration officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones’s past actions received broad airing" — albeit certainly not by the Times. See? Having deigned to say hello now that it's time to say goodbye, the Gray Lady wants you to know this is simply a good-governance issue: If only "Green Jobs Czar" was a confirmation position, there might have been more careful vetting — at both the administration and congressional level.

The point, of course, is that Obama vetted Jones just fine. President Obama is not Mr. Magoo — haplessly gravitating to Truther Van and Ayers and Dohrn and Klonsky and Davis and Wright and the Chicago New Party and ACORN, etc. Jones is a kindred spirit. Obama knows exactly who he is. Jones was given a non-confirmation job precisely because that circumvented the vetting process. This isn't one of those things that just happen. This is Barack "Transparency" Obama gaming the system.

As former Reagan staffer Jeffrey Lord explains at the Spectator, the Secret Service carefully scrutinizes the background of everyone who works at the White House. With his background, Van Jones couldn't possibly have gotten into the White House, much less had physical access to the president, unless the top echelon of the administration (I'd wager, the very top) overrode any objections.

The issue here isn't process. It's that Obama picked Van Jones because Obama adheres to Jones's Alinskyite views and tactics, and is entirely comfortable with what most of the public would see as the horrifying specter of Jones managing how billions of public dollars are spent. Note the Times's account of Jones's time at STORM:

Mr. Jones’s involvement in the 1990s with a group called Standing Together to
Organize a Revolutionary Movement prompted recent accusations by conservative
critics that he associated with Communists. The group, according to a
post-mortem written by some of its founders, was an anti-capitalist, antiwar
organization committed to achieving “solidarity among all oppressed peoples”
with “direct militant action.”

Hold on there. Direct-action? The use of intimidation and extortion tactics, including law-breaking, to achieve political results? Where have we heard that before? Well, there was ACORN, which happens to be both a stalwart Obama ally and "an anti-capitalist, antiwar organization committed to achieving solidarity among all oppressed peoples with direct militant action.”

Remember the name Madeline Talbott? Stanley Kurtz tried to tell the country about her before the election—back when conventional Beltway wisdom nuanced itself into the notion that Obama, a five-alarm radical, would govern from the center. Talbott is the Chicago ACORN leader who was so impressed by Obama's organizing skills that she brought him in to train her staff. And what sort of stuff was she into? Here's Stanley:

Talbot turns out to have been a key leader of that attempt by Acorn to storm the
Chicago City Council (during a living-wage debate).... The details are worth a
look: On July 31, 1997, six people were arrested as 200 Acorn protesters tried
to storm the Chicago City Council session. According to the Chicago Daily
Herald, Acorn demonstrators pushed over the metal detector and table used to
screen visitors, backed police against the doors to the council chamber, and
blocked late-arriving aldermen and city staff from entering the session. Reading
the Herald article, you might think Acorn’s demonstrators had simply lost
patience after being denied entry to the gallery at a packed meeting. Yet the
full story points in a different direction. This was not an overreaction by
frustrated followers who couldn’t get into a meeting (there were plenty of
protestors already in the gallery), but almost certainly a deliberate bit of
what radicals call “direct action,” orchestrated by Acorn’s Madeleine Talbot. As
Talbot was led away handcuffed, charged with mob action and disorderly conduct,
she explicitly justified her actions in storming the meeting.

Because the mainstream media was about as interested in investigating Obama’s direct-action stunts as it was in investigating Truther Van, not much is known about them. Despite the paper-trail purge, though, Stanley did manage to unearth one small episode of what anyone with eyes willing to see could have told you was the Obama way: the time Obama sent an intimidating group of protestors on a "surprise visit" to a meeting of local officials. The protestors surrounded the table while one of their number dressed down the officials, after which the group filed out of the room en masse. Message sent: Do what we say or prepare to be harassed.

A few months back, Obama and his mouthpieces tried to whip the public into a frenzy about the banks and high corporate salaries. The president then summoned the bank CEOs into his White House woodshed, where he bluntly told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

Think of Truther Van as the guy passing out the "Free Mumia" tee-shirts and the green pitchforks.

More...

Not a market- a cause

Consider these two stories and how the global warming hysteria has so terribly maligned the market system. The first from Silicone Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Report: Lights out next year for many in solar industry

Massive inventory buildup and Chinese competition could put half of all solar manufacturers out of business next year, according to a market research firm.

The report from The Information Network said inventory is averaging 122 days in 2009 versus 71 days in 2008.

Further, it reports that production has dropped to 27.9 percent of potential capacity in 2009 from 48 percent in 2008.

"As many as 50 percent of the more than 200 solar manufacturers, mired in red ink with current selling prices above $2 per watt, may not survive," the report said. Making matters worse, lower cost products from China are projected to drop to below $1 per watt in 2010 and 50 cents in 2011.

A number of solar panel manufacturers have reported losses in recent weeks including Energy Conversion Devices Inc., JA Solar, LDK Solar Co., Q-Cells, ReneSola Ltd., Solar Power Inc., and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd.
************
Now any reasonable person would read that and surmise that the solar power panel business was not a good investment at this time. The market, for the reasons explained , is way down and inventories are up. But solar power is not a market, it is a cause. from Silicone Valley Mercury News :

With $535M federal loan, Solyndra begins work on Fremont solar-panel plant

Solyndra, a privately held Fremont company, is using a $535 million loan from the U.S. Treasury to build its second solar-panel factory.

Solyndra celebrated the boost for solar power with star power: an event with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu — and, via satellite from the White House, Vice President Joe Biden.

"We have adopted policies in California that have driven demand for solar and other renewable technologies, and our businesses and entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge," Schwarzenegger said, according to a statement from his office.

Construction on the fabrication plant, or "fab," began today next to the company's first factory in Fremont, Solyndra said in a statement. The new fab is designed to produce enough rooftop photovoltaic solar panels to generate 500 megawatts of power a year.

"The economy needs clean-tech alternatives to help it recover, but our planet requires clean-tech solutions in order to survive," Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet said in a statement.

The second factory "will allow us to meet customer demand while making a positive impact on the world's energy and environmental needs," Gronet said.

Solyndra said it was the first company to secure a loan backed by the U.S. Department of Energy under a 2005 law to encourage the production of renewable energy. The $535 million loan was combined with $198 million in funding led by Argonaut Private Equity, Solyndra said.

The company said about 1,000 people will work at the plant once construction is done.

*******************

The disconnect here seems to be obvious. Not only is taxpayers money being used to subsidize an industry that can not be self supporting, it is subsidizing an industry that is "mired in red ink" and "may not survive". Even the potential "stimulus" generated by the subsidy is not warranted if as the first story makes clear there is no market for what they are subsidizing, thus no jobs.

Everything about the second story is a sham, from the Governator " "We have adopted policies in California that have driven demand for solar and other renewable technologies, and our businesses and entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge,"

If that is the case why is there such a glut of product and more importantly why do the businesses and entrepreneurs need subsidies? If you have created a market then the businesses ought to be able to support themselves-huh?

Then we have this from one of those alleged entrepreneurs:

The second factory "will allow us to meet customer demand while making a
positive impact on the world's energy and environmental needs," Gronet said.

Well if you have such demand why do you need The Governator and Nobel Laureate Chu to write you checks to meet it? Just another casualty in the global warming mirage-the market system.

More...

Stossel: The Green Jobs Fallacy

Stossel: The Green Jobs Fallacy

Still Some Selling To Do

FROM-Las Vegas Review Journal

Political climate for energy policies cools

Poll: Economy outweighs environment

By JENNIFER ROBISON

Recent surveys show Americans cooling to global warming, and they're even less keen on environmental policies they believe might raise power bills or imperil jobs. Those sentiments could mean a tougher road ahead for elected officials looking to fund investments in renewable power or install a carbon cap-and-trade system.

"Right now, Americans are more concerned about the economy than the environment," said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. "The politician who says, 'I'm going to cripple jobs and shut down factories' would be in trouble in this economy."

WHAT THE NUMBERS SAYMore...


Here's what Gallup found: The number of Americans who say the media have exaggerated global warming jumped to a record 41 percent in 2009, up from 35 percent a year ago. The most marked increase came among political independents, whose ranks of doubters swelled from 33 percent to 44 percent. Republican doubters grew from 59 percent to 66 percent, while Democratic skeptics stayed at around 20 percent.

What's more, fewer Americans believe the effects of global warming have started to occur: 53 percent see signs of a hotter planet, down from 61 percent in 2008. Global warming placed last among eight environmental concerns Gallup asked respondents to rank, with water pollution landing the top spot.

Another recent Gallup study found that, for the first time in 25 years of polling, more Americans care about economic growth than the environment. Just 42 percent of people surveyed said the environment takes precedence over growth, while 51 percent asserted expansion carries more weight. That reverses results from 2008, when 49 percent of respondents said the environment was paramount and 42 percent said economic growth came first. In 1985, the poll's first year, 61 percent placed a bigger priority on the environment, while 28 percent ranked economic growth highest.

All those results indicate trends that pose big challenges for the environmental movement, Gallup's researchers concluded. More pointedly, the findings signal potential trouble for policies designed to curb global warming.

"It's a conundrum. You can't just say to those interested in global warming that they need to do a better job of PR because they have been trying so hard," Newport said. "Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. He made a widely seen movie, and his book sold many copies. Yet, with all that, it hasn't worked. You would have to say that, somehow, they're not getting the message across."

Ask Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, why increasing numbers of Americans dispute global warming and place the economy ahead of the environment, and he'll say those findings are wrong.

"I don't accept their premise. I think the Gallup Poll is mistaken," said Weiss, whose organization will send its chief executive officer, former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, to Monday's clean energy confab. "I would want to look at their questions to see how they got to this place."

Weiss pointed to surveys that contradict Gallup's results. A Pew Environmental Group poll found that 77 percent of voters want lawmakers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and 55 percent said efforts to curb global warming will create jobs. Another poll from the National Wildlife Federation found that 55 percent of those polled strongly support a global warming plan that reduces pollution.

But it's not just Gallup that shows flagging concern about global warming. In a July Rasmussen poll, 56 percent said they didn't want to pay higher taxes or utility bills to generate clean energy and fight global warming. A January Pew poll placed global warming last among the top 20 priorities Americans have for 2009. Nos. 1 and 2? The economy and jobs. Even trade policy and lobbyists outranked global warming. And Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think-tank, pointed to a study from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association that showed 58 percent of respondents were unwilling to pay more than they currently pay for electricity to combat climate change.

'A HUGE AMOUNT OF SKEPTICISM'

Most observers say the economy is behind changing attitudes.

When people face immediate concerns such as job security, more-distant problems fade into the background, Newport said.

Studies show a strong historical correlation between economic prospects and support for environmental causes. When the economy surges, public support for green initiatives rises, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow with the free-market advocate Cato Institute.

"We're in the midst of one of the deepest recessions since the Great Depression, and people suspect environmental policies have price tags that are not inconsequential," Taylor said.

The public's interest in climate change also rises with extreme weather events, and the nation hasn't seen widespread, catastrophic weather since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Taylor added.

Ebell said he doesn't believe the recession or the weather are eroding public concern about global warming. Rather, he said, publicity over the high cost of green policies in Europe and other regions, as well as indications that those policies haven't yielded results and a 12-year string of stable global temperatures, are changing Americans' minds.

European countries have imposed gasoline taxes of $3 to $4 per gallon to curb consumption, Ebell noted, and the TaxPayers' Alliance in Great Britain estimated that the average British family spends more than $1,200 a year on green charges and levies. Despite such investments, a December report from the United Nations showed that greenhouse gas emissions have grown by almost 10 percent worldwide since 1990, if you control for the emissions-curbing collapse of the Soviet Union and ensuing economic decline in Eastern Europe.

More importantly, said Ebell, the planet's average temperature hasn't risen since 1997, despite a 5 percent gain in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the same period. Twelve years doesn't make for a long-term trend, Ebell said, but every year that goes by with no increase in average temperatures makes it harder to assert the climate is sensitive to carbon dioxide.

"I think there's a huge amount of skepticism among the public. They've heard all these claims, and now they've been informed that there isn't any recent warming," Ebell said. "The public, without having a lot of information about it, is pretty astute. I think the alarmists are having a hard time making the case for global warming simply because reality is against them and the public has figured it out." (The Competitive Enterprise Institute has taken flak for accepting funding from oil giant ExxonMobil. Ebell said the financing ended several years ago, and the funding source didn't affect the group's policy positions, which were in place before the nonprofit sought the money and have remained intact since the agreement concluded.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., responded that the science showing the greenhouse effect on Earth's climate is solid. He pointed to pictures from Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, which reveal the virtual disappearance of a glacier in the past 35 years.

Weiss added that ignoring the environment carries its own costs: The typical household energy bill has risen $1,100 in the past eight years, even without policies to fight global warming.

"Doing nothing has been very costly," he said.

Worse still, agreed Reid and Weiss, eschewing environmental policies hurts the economy. Prominent venture capitalists and executives from Fortune 500 companies such as General Electric say investing in green energy will boost the economy, creating millions of high-tech jobs. Even a policy as simple as retrofitting existing buildings and constructing new buildings according to green standards would bolster the construction sector, as well as reduce waste and pollution, Reid said.

"The country that makes the clean energy technologies of the future is going to be the one that dominates the world economy," Weiss said. "Right now, China, Germany and other economic competitors are ahead of us because we've had eight years of doing nothing. Americans know we must change the way we generate and use energy. The question isn't whether we're going to buy clean energy technologies. The question is whether we're going to buy clean energy technologies made in the United States and marketed overseas, or whether we'll buy them from China and bring them here."

STILL SOME SELLING TO DO

Bringing alternative power sources online and reining in greenhouse gases pose upfront costs, though, because the country's energy infrastructure was built around fossil fuels. Congress has appropriated more than $60 billion for clean energy initiatives in the past year, including $11 billion for a national "smart" electric grid, $5 billion for making homes more efficient and $2 billion to invest in advanced batteries.

Also, the federal Energy Information Administration released a report Wednesday that tallied up the costs of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the carbon cap-and-trade bill that passed the House of Representatives in May and goes to the Senate for a vote in the fall. The agency's analysis found that the bill would increase the cost of energy, pare economic output, curb purchasing power and cut $432 billion to $1.9 trillion from the nation's gross domestic product by 2030.

And that's where all those polls showing that Americans aren't certain those costs are worth it might begin to matter. With so many surveys revealing that Americans have little appetite for environmental policies that they think could stall economic growth or pinch consumers' budgets, policymakers still have some selling to do, observers say.

Politicians might just need to work harder at educating the public on why they think green policies are important, Newport said.

Other elected officials could end up changing their stands on those policies because, after all, a politician's biggest goal is to keep his job.

Monday's National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 will bring a parade of celebrated public policy experts to Las Vegas to discuss greening the country's economy.

But as leaders including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger encourage investments in alternative energy, their policy prescriptions could face serious headwinds from changing public opinions.


"Some people think politicians vote on the merits of an issue," Taylor said. "There might be one here or there who does that, but they're exceptions to the rule. For the most part, politicians are like businessmen, only they're in the business of earning votes. Virtually everything they do is with an eye on how many votes it will get them. And these sorts of surveys tell politicians that votes for cap-and-trade programs are extremely hazardous to their electoral health."

Members of Congress who represent blue states and hold leadership positions in their parties will be safer than those who hail from swing states and enjoy less seniority, Taylor predicted.

Reid vowed Friday to continue his push for clean energy policies, saying that a sound and healthy environment is critical to any prosperous economy, and the Gallup numbers show most Americans continue to believe that the seriousness of global warming has been correctly portrayed or even understated.

"We have a duty to all of our children to make sure we don't let temporary difficulties get in the way of making good choices for their future," he said.

"Grasping at straws"

FROM- New Geography

Green Jobs Can't Save The Economy

by Joel Kotkin

Nothing is perhaps more pathetic than the exertions of economic developers and politicians grasping at straws, particularly during hard times. Over the past decade, we have turned from one panacea to another, from the onset of the information age to the creative class to the boom in biotech, nanotech and now the "green economy."

This latest economic fad is supported by an enormous industry comprising nonprofits, investment banks, venture capitalists and their cheerleaders in the media. Their song: that "green" jobs will rescue our still weak economy while saving the planet. Ironically, what they all fail to recognize is that the thing that would spur green jobs most is economic growth.More...

All told, green jobs constitute barely 700,000 positions across the country – less than 0.5% of total employment. That's about how many jobs the economy lost in January this year. Indeed a recent study by Sam Sherraden at the center-left New America Foundation finds that, for the most part, green jobs constitute a negligible factor in employment – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Policymakers, he warns, should avoid "overpromising about the jobs and investment we can expect from government spending to support the green economy."

This is true even in California, where green-job hype has become something of a fetish among self-styled "progressives." One recent study found that the state was creating some 10,000 green jobs annually before recession. To put this into context, the total state economy has lost over 700,000 jobs over the past year (more than 200,000 in Los Angeles County alone). Any net growth in green jobs has barely made a dent in any economic category; only education and health services have shown job gains over this period.

More worrisome, in terms of national competitiveness, the green sector seems to be going in the wrong direction. The U.S.'s overall "green" trade balance has moved from a $14.4 billion surplus in 1997 to a nearly $9 billion deficit last year. As the country has pushed green energy, ostensibly to free itself from foreign energy, it has become ever more dependent on countries such as China, Japan and Germany for critical technology. Some of this is directly attributable to the often massive subsidies these countries offer to green-tech companies. But as New America's Sherraden puts it, this "does not augur well for the future of the green trade balance."

Nor are we making it any easier for American workers to gain from green-related manufacturing. Some of America's "greenest" regions are inhospitable for placing environmentally oriented manufacturing facilities. For example, high taxes and regulatory climate have succeeded in intimidating solar cell makers from coming to green-friendly California; a manufacturer from China told the Milken Institute's Ross DeVol that the state's "green" laws precluded making green products there.

Attempts to put windmills in Nantucket, Mass., the Catskills and Jones Beach in New York and other scenic areas have also been blocked by environmentalist groups. Transmission lines, necessary to take "renewable" energy from distant locales to energy-hungry cities, often face similar hurdles. Solar farms in the Mojave desert might help meet renewable energy quotas but, as wildlife groups have noted, may not be so good for local fauna.

And then there is the impact of green policies on the overall economy. Green power is expensive and depends on massive subsidization, with government support levels at roughly 20 times or more per megawatt hour than relatively clean and abundant natural gas. Lavishing breaks for Wall Street investors and favored green companies also may be harmful to the rest of the economy. A recent study on renewable energy subsidies on the Spanish economy found that for every "green" job created more than two were lost in the non-subsidized economy.

So how do we build a green economy that is sustainable without massive subsidies? First, governments need to learn how to say no to some environmentalists. Green jobs and renewable energy can not be fully developed without affecting somebody's backyard. Windmills will have to be built in some scenic places; transmission lines may mar somebody's "view-shed."

Arguably, the thing that would spur green jobs and domestic industries most would be economic growth. Environmentalists long have been cool to growth, since they link it to carbon production and other noxious human infestations. As an official at the Natural Resources Defense Council put it, the recession has "a moment of breathing room." Disaster may be still looming, but bad times add a few more moments to our carbon clock.

Long term, though, I would argue hard times may prove harmful for the environmental cause. Even with subsidies, many renewable energy projects are now on hold or being canceled across the country. Slackening energy demand, brought on by a weak economy, has undermined the case for new sources of energy generation; what looked attractive with oil prices at $140 a barrel and headed higher looks at $70 less so.

Similarly, hard-pressed homeowners and businesses don't constitute the best market for new, often expensive "green" products. A growing economy, which would drive up energy prices, could spur a more sustainable interest in alternative energy from firms that now only do so for public relations concerns. At the same time, cash-rich consumers could more afford to install energy-saving home insulation or rooftop solar panels. A strong economy would also spur sales of new energy-efficient appliances and cars.

This process would go more quickly if government relied less on mandates, which tend to scare serious investors, and turned toward incentives. With the right tax advantages, energy efficiency could become a positive imperative for companies.

There's also an unappreciated political calculus at work. A persistently weak economy undermines support for the green agenda. For the first time in 25 years, according to a Gallup poll, more people place higher priority on economic growth than on the environment.

Furthermore, more people now feel claims about global warming are "exaggerated." Early this year, Pew reported that global warming ranked last among the top 20 priorities of Americans.

Ultimately, environmentalists need to realize that the road to a green economy does not lie in promoting hysteria, guilt and self-abnegation while ignoring prohibitive costs and grim economic realities. Green enthusiasts should focus on promoting a growing economy capable of generating both the demand and the ability to pay for more planet-friendly products. After all, the economy needs green jobs less than green jobs need a thriving economy

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin early next year.

Hope and Change in the UK too !

FROM-The Economist

Show us the money

Good ideas are cheap, industrial policies expensive

SO MUCH for Labour’s fearsome media machine. On the morning of July 15th Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, was giving press interviews in London trumpeting his government’s plans to cut Britain’s greenhouse-gas emissions and rebuild its economy around clean energy. The very next day the Vestas wind-turbine plant on the Isle of Wight, the biggest in Britain, completed its final batch of turbine blades and shut up shop, with the loss of over 600 jobs.More...

It was an embarrassing reminder of the recurring gap between aspiration and achievement. Labour has made impressive noises about the need to tackle global warming and has signed Britain up to a smorgasbord of targets. Yet emissions of planet-heating gases have remained broadly stable over the past few years.

In an attempt to close that gap, the government decided in 2008 that it would treat carbon like money, setting up five-year, legally binding carbon budgets. The first requires a cut in national emissions of 22% from 1990 levels by 2012, and Mr Miliband detailed this week how that would happen. Power stations will bear most of the burden. Subsidies for renewables will be raised in the hope that wind, sun and waves will provide 30% of total electricity generation by 2020, and nuclear power another 8%. But although the government says it wants both atomic and renewable energy, not everyone believes it. Before the announcement there was a public war of words between the two industries, each keen to do the other down.

Mr Miliband had the guts to admit that building nuclear reactors and wind turbines would mean energy bills rising, an unpopular consequence that other politicians have avoided mentioning. Officials guess that Britain will have to spend £324 billion-404 billion ($532 billion-663 billion) by 2050 to scrub out carbon.

But so, runs the hope, will other countries, and the other half of the government’s plan is to prime British firms to take advantage of that. In the wake of the credit crunch there has been much talk of fiscal stimulus and the need to rebalance the economy away from financial services. Ministers have alighted on green industry as a winner of the future, with a global market now worth £3 trillion. Some usefully elastic definitions allow them to claim that there are already 800,000 “green jobs” in Britain (2.8% of the total) in an industry worth £106 billion.

Yet the money looks inadequate to the ambition. The biggest new dollop of cash is £405m for developing eco-industries, including £120m for offshore wind turbines, £60m for wave and tidal energy, and £15m for nuclear research. That pales next to the hundreds of billions the government mustered to bail out the finance industry it now hopes to trim. Gordon Edge, chief economist at the British Wind Energy Association, argues that raw financial firepower is less important than directing it wisely, but he concedes that Britain’s government has been less pushy than some. In fact, say analysts at HSBC, a bank, its Keynesian splurge is one of the world’s least green. Britain has allocated 7% of total spending to environmental causes, compared with 12% in America and 83% in South Korea.

How much any of this matters, however, is an open question. Many greens are more interested in the opposition Tories, who look a shoo-in at the election which must take place by next summer. In theory the Conservatives have similar ideas to Labour about encouraging green business. But they are not traditionally a tree-hugging party, and many wonder how deep their new-found environmentalism runs.

Early in his leadership of the Tory Party David Cameron devoted much time to rebranding it as eco-friendly. He changed its logo to a tree, and built a little wind turbine atop his London home. The tree remains, but the turbine had been put up in the wrong place and had to be removed. Mr Cameron has subsequently moved house, and there is no sign of a replacement.

STOP THE PRESSES !

Sanity in the Main Stream Media

FROM-Boston Herald

Green job fallacies

Can governments create “green” jobs by spending big wads of money? Sure - but at the cost of destroying other jobs.

The benefits, environmental or otherwise, might offset the costs. But three prominent recent reports advocating the creation of “green” jobs make no attempt to calculate real benefits and real costs. The economic illiteracy revealed is breathtaking.

The Beacon Hill Institute has analyzed these proposals. We noted similar analyses last month from the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Mont. Columnist George Will highlighted the subject last Thursday.

Will reported on a Spanish researcher’s finding that Spain has destroyed or not created 2.2 jobs for each one created with the help of subsidies of $752,000 to $800,000 in alternative energy.

The Beacon Hill Institute examined reports from the Worldwatch Institute done with support from several international agencies, from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for the Center for American Progress and from Global Insight, a consulting firm, for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

All count jobs as benefits - as the Beacon Hill Institute puts it, they are “mistakenly arguing that a cost is actually a benefit.” None calculates jobs destroyed or not created.

For example, Worldwatch argues for “nonmotorized transport,” such as the pedicabs used in Uganda and Kenya to transport large numbers of people. Pedicabs - amusing as they may be for a ride to Fenway - would just impoverish America.

The Center for American Progress claims new credit and investment in construction could “rapidly provide job opportunities that are badly needed.”

How odd. For recovery, capital and labor need to flow out of construction.

“The work that the job entails is a cost we must endure in order to receive the benefit the work provides,” the Institute wrote. This lesson needs to be more widely learned.




More...

Money is Green too

FROM-UK Guardian

BP shuts alternative energy HQ
• 'Beyond Petroleum' boast in doubt as clean energy boss quits
• Renewables budget will be reduced by up to £550m this year

BP has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts in moves likely to be seen by environmental critics as further signs of the oil group moving "back to petroleum".

But Tony Hayward, the group's chief executive, said BP remained as committed as ever to exploring new energy sources and the non-oil division would benefit from the extra focus of being brought back in house.

BP Alternative Energy was given its own headquarters in County Hall opposite the Houses of Parliament two years ago and its managing director, Vivienne Cox, oversaw a small division of 80 staff concentrating on wind and solar power.More...
But the 49-year-old Cox – BP's most senior female executive, who previously ran renewables as part of a larger gas and power division now dismantled by Hayward – is standing down tomorrow.

This comes alongside huge cuts in the alternative energy budget – from $1.4bn (£850m) last year to between $500m and $1bn this year, although spending is still roughly in line with original plans to invest $8bn by 2015.

The move back to BP's corporate headquarters at St James's Square in London's West End made sense, particularly when the group was sitting on spare office space due to earlier cutbacks, said Hayward.

"We are going through a major restructuring and bringing the alternative energy business headquarters into the head office seems a good idea to me.

"It saves money and brings it closer to home ... you could almost see it as a reinforcement [of our commitment to the business]," he said.

Cox was stepping down to spend more time with her children, Hayward added. "I know you would love to make a story out of all this," he said, "but it's quite hard work."

The reason for the departure of Cox is variously said by industry insiders to be caused by frustration over the business being downgraded in importance or because she really does intend to stay at home more with her young children. Cox had already reduced her working week down to three days and had publicly admitted the difficulty of combining different roles.

She will be replaced by another woman, her former deputy Katrina Landis, but the moves will worry those campaigning for more women in business, especially as Linda Cook, Shell's most senior female executive, has recently left her job too.

BP has gradually given up on plans to enter the UK wind industry and concentrated all its turbine activities on the US, where it can win tax breaks and get cheaper and easier access to land.

In April the company closed a range of solar power manufacturing plants in Spain and the US with the loss of 620 jobs and Hayward has publicly questioned whether solar would ever become competitive with fossil fuels, something that goes against the current thinking inside the renewables sector.

Hayward has also moved BP into more controversial oil areas, such as Canada's tar sands, creating an impression that he has given up on the objectives of his predecessor, Lord Browne, to take the company "Beyond Petroleum".

Pie in the sky and in your face

PIE IN THE SKY ...........

Nice job of creating a myth by special interest groups and a media which seem not to have a problem with the motives of these particular agenda driven institutions.

(excerpt from)
FROM-Reuters
Green Economy Investments Bring 300 Percent More Jobs, Reports Find

...Together, the reports show the economic, environmental and social impacts of investing about $150 billion per year in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies; that number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress.

"[I]nvesting in clean energy for $1 million will generate 16.7 jobs; correspondingly, investing in fossil fuels generates about 5.3 jobs," explained Robert Pollin, the co-director of PERI and the lead author of both studies, in a press conference this morning. "When you net the two things out, you're going to get about 12 incremental jobs per million in spending by investing in clean energy."
In addition to creating these new jobs -- enough to cut the current unemployment levels in the U.S. by 1 percent, from the current 9.4 percent to 8.4 percent -- and trimming the country's carbon footprint, the investment proposed in the reports will also make well paid labor available on a large scale to working-class, blue-collar and less-educated workers.....

....And In Your Face
Then there is of course that little thing called reality

(excerpt from)
FROM-Market Watch
The green-collar jobs myth
Commentary: Not that much to gain from alternative energy industry

There's a lot of talk about creating millions of new jobs via the "green" economy, one that weans reliance from fossil fuels and invests in alternative energies and technology.

But such a massive shift in labor -- figures are for some 5 million new "green-collar" jobs to be created -- isn't likely to happy anytime soon, or anytime at all.

In short, we shouldn't be betting on job growth from the clean and renewable energy sector, even if it is the fastest-growing segment of the economy right now. That would be a mistake in planning that could stay current policy and keep things relatively inert.

As new jobs are created in alternative energy openings, old jobs in traditional energy companies will be lost. This creates a break-even job scenario. Simply put, a new solar plant creates several hundred new jobs. That energy replaces a coal-fired power plant. The coal plant shutters and hundreds of jobs are lost. Result: no gain.

Moreover, the jobs in the alternative energy sector -- beyond construction workers hired temporarily to build or retrofit -- need a different set of skills than those who have been working in the traditional energy sector. An oil-rig operator can't become a wind operator overnight.....

and

(excerpt from)
FROM-Traverse City Record-Eagle
Green economy bid faces hurdles

...Energy experts and executives at the same conference say it's a green gamble for Michigan or any state to take and time is not on their side. They argue the federal government is creating unrealistic expectations for the development of -- and economic development from -- new energy sources.

States must resist the "fallacy" that "so-called green jobs created by alternative-energy development will drive the economic recovery," said James Mulva, chairman and chief executive of Houston-based ConocoPhillips Co., one of the nation's largest oil and gas companies. ...

.....In reality, these sources will cost more than fossil fuels; energy prices will rise," he said. "This could actually hurt the economy and cost jobs or make the U.S. less competitive than countries with cheaper energy."

The International Energy Agency predicts that between 2006 and 2030, worldwide energy demand will grow 45 percent and the sources of supply will remain largely as they are now.
Mulva said the nation "must develop a more diverse basket of energy supplies," but replacing fossil fuels would take "unimaginable effort" advancing the necessary technology, skilled labor and capital investment......

Well we can also look to California for an economic blueprint to embracing green at the expense of a more moderate switch over from traditional energy resources right? They seem to have an economy that is the envy of the nation.
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Nickel and dimed

The ilconceived and unnecessary rush to change the country's energy network is going to cost the economy and individuals enormously. We will be nickle and dimed into economic stagnation. This is but an example. Equally as sad is this telling line from the article;

" ... electricity customers will pay an extra 71 cents per month and natural gas customers will pay an added $1.72 a month beginning with June bills to support the company's energy-optimization plan. The plan aims to increase energy efficiency for the utility and customers."

If the plan is to make energy more efficient for customers, why should it cost more? In the normal world efficiency equals savings, only in this new capitalist destruction regime we are being forced fed, does the consumer pay more for efficiency.

FROM-Detroit Free Press

Bills to rise for wind power

Consumers Energy surcharges OK'd

Consumers Energy customers will begin paying more on their bills to help pay for the utility's efforts to reach the state-mandated requirement of generating 10% of its power from renewable energy sources.

Electricity customers will begin seeing a $2.50 monthly surcharge on their September bills to support Consumers' Renewable Energy Plan, which calls for 900 megawatts of electricity coming from wind power by 2015. The utility plans to build between 250 and 500 wind turbines in Mason and Tuscola counties to generate 450 megawatts of power. The rest is to be purchased from contractors.

The cost to build the turbines will be $1.2 billion, said Consumers spokesman Jeff Holyfield. The utility is gathering meteorological data at 42,000 acres in the two counties to decide the best locations for the turbines.

In addition to the alternative energy surcharge, Consumers electricity customers will pay an extra 71 cents per month and natural gas customers will pay an added $1.72 a month beginning with June bills to support the company's energy-optimization plan. The plan aims to increase energy efficiency for the utility and customers.

The Michigan Public Service Commission approved the added charges Tuesday. The renewable energy and energy-optimization plans for DTE Energy, which serves most electricity customers in southeast Michigan, are to be considered by the PSC Tuesday.

In the last two months, the PSC also has approved renewable energy plans submitted by the other nine investor-owned utilities and 10 co-op utilities across the state.


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