Weekly John Locke Foundation research division newsletter focusing on environmental issues.
The newsletter highlights relevant analysis done by the JLF and other think tanks as well as items in the news.
1. Gorejazerra
This week we saw the spectacle of Al Gore selling out to really big oil, netting himself a cool $100 million out of a $500 million deal. He sold his cable TV channel, Current TV, to Al Jazeera, which is bank rolled primarily by the Emir of Qatar, who has gained his wealth from oil. If we are to believe Al Gore, the burning of oil and the emissions of carbon dioxide that result are causing disastrous global warming that will be and are ruining life on earth.
Gore’s now former employees are not happy about the deal. Here are some quotes that the New York Post gathered after a recent meeting of the employees with their new bosses, Ehab Al Shihabi and Muftah Al Suwaidan.
Referring to big Al:
He has no credibility. He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising — and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?
We all know now that Al Gore is nothing but a bulls***ter,
Al was always lecturing us about green. He kept his word about green all right — as in cold, hard cash!
2. Fiscal Cliff Deal Continues to Subsidize Big Green
The fiscal cliff deal made between the president and congress not only raised taxes for almost all Americans, contrary to all political promises during the presidential campaign, but it also continued a host of crony capitalist measures meant to subsidize the president’s green agenda. In addition to subsidies already in place for plug in and other green cars, new subsidies were extended to plug in motorcycles. As reported by Paul Chesser for the National Legal and Policy Center, "buyers are allowed to deduct from their tax bills 10 percent of the cost of the two- (or three-) wheelers, or $2,500, whichever is less." The cost of this program is projected to be about $4 million over the next decade. The benefits? Well, if it’s meant to curb global warming, they most certainly will be zero.
Bio-fuels also received their share of the fiscal cliff deal. Chesser points out that "a $1.01-per-gallon production credit was extended for cellulosic biofuels, which now also includes fuels manufactured from algae, and a $1.00-per-gallon biodiesel credit was continued through 2013." The cost to taxpayers of this friendly giveaway? $2.26 billion over the next ten years.
But the biggest giveaway to the greens in the fiscal cliff deal came in the form of an extension of the wind energy tax credit. This is a 2.2 cent per kilowatt hour subsidy with a price tag to the tax payer of $12 billion.
As Chesser concludes:
The industry has whined that without the tax break, it is no longer viable, which ought to speak volumes. Like electric cars and solar energy, wind power has been around for over a century, yet has never found a way to generate enough electricity to meet demand on more than a minimal scale. If it was ever going to work on a mass scale, it would have done so long ago.
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