This weekly newsletter, focused on environmental issues, highlights relevant analysis done by the John Locke Foundation and other think tanks, as well as items in the news.
1. But if they’re jobs that come without subsidies, the president’s not interested
After three years of throwing hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars at wind power plants, solar battery facilities, solar power plants, electric cars, biofuels, etc., all allegedly to "create jobs," the Obama administration has decided to put on hold (possibly permanently) a real job creator: the Keystone oil pipeline project from Canada to the Texas coast. This is a $7 billion, privately funded (the likely problem for Obama) project intended to bring crude oil from the sands of Canada to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. for refining. Construction of the pipeline would have created (actually created, not "created or saved") thousands of jobs directly and indirectly by spurring economic growth along the construction route of the pipeline and in the Gulf Coast refining industry. It would also mean lower prices for refined oil products here in the U.S., which would be the major beneficiary of expanded supplies.
The pipeline would also increase safety in terms of oil spills. According to this article from the American Enterprise Institute,
Long-term statistics show convincingly that there is no safer way to transport large masses of liquids over long distances than a pipeline. Moving the same amount by trucks or rail would be much more risky, in addition to being vastly more expensive. So would be moving the oil from Alberta to British Columbia and then shipping it by tankers via the Panama Canal to Texas.
Furthermore, it is quite likely that this oil, if not sold to the U.S., would be used in China, where the cars burning the gasoline are much more polluting than those in the U.S. As the AEI article concludes,
By preventing the oil flow from Canada, the United States will thus deliberately deprive itself of new manufacturing and construction jobs; it will not slow down the increase of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion (OK, by two weeks, perhaps); it will almost certainly empower China; and it will make itself strategically even more vulnerable by becoming further dependent on declining, unstable, and contested overseas crude oil supplies. That is what is called a spherically perfect decision, because no matter from which angle you look at it, it looks perfectly the same: wrong.
Gee, if I didn’t want to think the best of our president, I would think that he may have other, unstated goals that are really not about creating economic growth and employment opportunities, or even about improving the environment. But that would be cynical.
2. Beware of Coke’s White Can
Coca-Cola has launched a fundraising campaign for the eco-pressure group the World Wildlife Fund. Instead of using its profits to expand operations and create jobs, Coke will be diverting $2 million from its actual business of making soft drinks, which has to come out of the hides of its workers, customers, and shareholders, to the funding of environmental extremism. To promote the campaign, they are selling Coke in white cans with a picture of a polar bear on the front. My former colleague Paul Chesser has an excellent article discussing the lack of truth and the plethora of propaganda surrounding the campaign.
Well, it looks like this holiday season, it will be Pepsi products in the Cordato household (or maybe RC Cola).
3. A great interview with Lord Christopher Monckton
Watch this interview with the British global warming skeptic whom Al Gore refuses to debate, Lord Christopher Monckton. Monckton sat down with Ginni Thomas at the Daily Caller. All segments are well worth watching.
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