CIVIL DEFENSE PERSPECTIVES

July 2008 (vol. 24, #5)
1601 N Tucson Blvd #9, Tucson AZ 85716
c 2007 Physicians for Civil Defense

The case, Massachusetts v. EPA, was limited to motor vehicle emissions, but the EPA's 800-page Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) covers stationary sources also: possibly even your home, your farm, or your business.

Why and How You Should Comment

The public has an unusually long 120 days to comment on this disastrous proposal, starting with the publication date of July 11. The introduction by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, eight letters from heads of other departments and agencies, and a strong statement from the White House explain the folly of using the CAA in this never-intended manner. Even its author, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), has stated the CAA should not be forced into service to regulate greenhouse gases. But if the rules are not implemented, just one environmentalist lawsuit pointing out how the CAA establishes thresholds for Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) could halt the economy, states Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity.

The ANPR and instructions for submitting comments are available at www.epa.gov/climatechange/anpr.html. Model comments will be posted at www.physiciansforcivildefense.org or sent to you on request. Please send us a copy of yours.

The proposed rules are far more draconian than the Lieberman-Warner bill that the Senate rejected. It is a “radical plan for reordering the entire U.S. economy,” writes Kerpen (TWTW 7/19/08, www.sepp.org).

For the first time, CAA rules would be applied to all sectors of the economy–and even to large single-family homes (>5,000 sq ft) heated with natural gas. An estimated 54% of the 2.4 million commercial non-mall buildings in the U.S. would require a permit. The cost of typical permits starts at $100,000, writes the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. “It is difficult to overemphasize how potentially dis-ruptive and burdensome such a...regulatory regime would be.”

CO₂ and Life

According to the ANPR, a 60% reduction in U.S. emissions below 2000 levels would result in levels last produced in the U.S. in the 1950s, when the population was 151 million, about half its current size. Per capita emissions have never been as low as the 2.5 tons/y required to meet the standard of 80% reduction by 2050, when population is expected to reach 420 million–not even in colonial days, notes Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) (WSJ 4/28/08).

Atmospheric CO₂ is said to be a good proxy for human population (Brian Lewis, http://faculty.washington.edu/blewis/papers/CO2/CO2.html). As it might take several lifetimes, at 0.1-0.3 tons/y, for a human to exhale enough CO₂ to reach the 21-ton threshold allowable under one provision of the CAA, individual breathing permits are not required–yet. A farm with 25 cows, however, would exceed the proposed limits, owing to “enteric fermentation” (flatulence) (WSJ 7/19-20/08). The editorialist coined a new word: nanomanagement.

A portent of things to come may be a “fun” environmental game for children, Planet Slayer, concocted by the tax-funded Australian Broadcast Corporation. It tells children that the average lifestyle (meat-eating, car-riding, average utility-using) “pig” uses up his share of the planet, and should thus die, at age 9.3 years (Environ Climate News, August 2008).

There is really only one way to meet the Green's stated goals. As Maurice Strong, founding director of the UN Environment Programme said: “We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse” (ISN Security Watch 5/30/08). “The rise of atmospheric CO₂ above 450 [ppm] can be prevented only by an unprecedented (in severity and duration) depression of the global economy...” (Vaclav Smil, Nature 5/8/08).

The needed mass death follows. “Poverty has been and remains the world's greatest killer,” write Paul Reiter of the Institut Pasteur and Roger Bate of AEI (WSJ 4/10/08).

The Green agenda is moving Britain in that direction. The number of children living below the breadline rose last year by 100,000, and the number of poor pensioners by 300,000 (Times 6/11/08)–largely because of increased energy prices.

Global Taxation, Regulation, Litigation–and Prosecution?

If the U.S. doesn't destroy itself with its own Congress, EPA, and Supreme Court, a global Earth Atmosphere Trust is proposed–a supranational body that exercises ownership rights over the air (Science 2/8/08, www.earthinc.org). This will, through a “drastic departure from business as usual,” control climate change and alleviate global poverty. Trustees would serve “long terms,” but could be removed by an unspecified mechanism if they are “not managing the trust for the benefit of...all current and future people.” Revenues for auctioning off emissions permits would be up to $3.6 trillion/y, half of which would be returned, equally, to each of 6.3 billion people.

Socialist world government is the goal; climate change is moving us toward the “tipping point that opens a window of opportunity for making major changes.” It might have to start nationally or regionally, proponents say.

In a show-trial congressional hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) told oil company executives: “This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh...would be about basically taking over and the government running all your companies” (Investor's Business Daily 5/29/08).

James Hansen of NASA-GISS called for putting chief executives of hydrocarbon fuel companies on trial for “high crimes against humanity and nature,” for “actively spreading doubt about global warming” (Guardian 6/23/08). In an international criminal court perhaps? Whatever it takes, to get atmospheric CO₂ below 350 ppm–“the most important number on the planet” (www.350.org).

It's not about saving the planet, writes Paul Driessen. It's about the power to control and curtail the energy we rely on. It's about the right to liberty, property–and life.

Drill Here, Drill Now, Drill ANWR

If President Clinton hadn't bowed to Wilderness Society demands and vetoed 1995 legislation, we'd be producing a million barrels a day now from the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), equal to U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia.

Drilling now would have oil flowing in 5 to 10 years– depending on how many lawsuits environmentalists filed. That's far faster than benefits from any supposed alternatives, writes Paul Driessen. The estimated 15.6 billion barrels of oil beneath ANWR, of which 60% should be recoverable with today's technology, represents $1.3 trillion at $135/barrel. Drilling and production operations would impact only 2,000 acres, a footprint smaller than that of LAX airport–compared to the 23,000,000 acres (the size of Indiana) required to grow corn to produce 7 billion gallons of ethanol.

For facts on ANWR, visit www.anwr.org. The photo gallery features 11 bears walking on the Alaska pipeline.

Life and Global Warming

Global warming could doom more than a million species to extinction by 2050, say researchers, extrapolating results from a study of about 1,000 species (National Geographic News 7/12/08). That could be “too optimistic,” write J. Alan Pounds and Robert Puschendorf. But “rapid reductions of greenhouse gas emissions may allow some of these species to hang on.”

Yet, during past periods that experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as those predicted for us, very few species actually went extinct, with the exception of about 20 species of large mammals at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe.

“Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside,” writes Daniel Botkin of the Ctr for the Study of the Environment (WSJ 10/10/07).

As for the effects of CO₂ itself, satellites show the earth is the greenest it's been in decades, perhaps in centuries. Over about two decades, the earth as a whole became more bountiful by 6.2%, writes Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post 6/7/08). Why aren't environmentalists rushing to study the effects of lower CO₂ on the plants and animals that depend on it?

Energy Colonialism

According to a report on Deutsche Welle, the town of Lützen, Germany, population about 50,000, claims to be 100% green. It is fueled by palm oil from plantations that are replacing the Indonesian rain forest, stated Professor S.S. Penner at the 2008 DDP meeting. Loss of the forest canopy is causing brutal heat that is decimating the great apes; young apes are being tranquilized and shipped to Malaysia. The native human population remains at risk.

Verschlimmbesserung

Meaning intended improvements that make things worse, this German word was said to be one of Einstein's favorites.

Examples: (1) switching land use from food crops to biofuel, resulting in starvation, increased emissions of pollutants such as nitrous oxide and ozone, a decrease in earth's albedo– and increased net carbon injection into the atmosphere; (2) reduction in air pollutants that reflect sunlight, causing more warming than CO₂ could.

Green Antecedents

Czech President Vaclav Klaus quotes the authoritative essay by Peter Staudenmaier, “Fascist Ideology: the Green Wing of the Nazi Party and Its Historical Antecedents,” as a guide to understanding global-warming hysteria:

As with Communism, Klaus notes, the Green utopia will have results very different from the promised ones. The noble slogans are smokescreens for the agenda of power and hegemony for the chosen ones (People for the West, July 2008).

NJ Solar Plan Far Behind

The New Jersey State master energy plan decrees that solar panels should contribute 2.12% to the state's electricity by 2020. After 6 years and $170 million in rebates, solar generates only 0.07% of current energy needs. Another $11 billion is said to be needed. This would add 7.5% to electricity bills, already the highest in the nation (NY Times 6/25/08).

According to Ivar Giaever, 1973 Nobel Prize winner for superconductivity, it takes years for a solar panel to generate the amount of energy that was needed to produce it.

Another Investment Bubble?

The entire alternative energy renewables investments boom may turn into another “dotcom bubble,” warns consulting engineer Brian Leyland. Interest may sour if reliance on wind power is accompanied by major power failures plus an increase of 50% in electrical bills. The boom in the subsidy-fueled industry has not allowed time for proper stress testing of ever-larger turbines. In August 2007, Der Spiegel reported a rising incidence of “mishaps, breakdowns, and accidents,” including a rotor blade breaking away (TCSDaily 1/23/08).

Nearly half the “clean tech” venture capital in the U.S. now goes to California (Sacramento Bee 5/5/08). Like the U.S. and Lützen, California outsources energy, with 20% of its power coming from coal-burning plants in other states. “Flex your power NOW” media announcements let consumers know when they need to turn off appliances to help the grid cope.

Shutting Down the Economy

In the U.S., electricity demand is growing twice as fast as supply (WSJ 10/17/07). Yet every time a new coal-fired plant is proposed anywhere in the U.S., a lawyer from the Sierra Club or one of its allies is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary (LA Times 4/14/08).

Britain is “obliged” by EU rules to generate no less than 38% of its power from “renewable sources” within 12 years. To comply with the EU Large Combustion Plants directive, it will need to shut down 40% of its generating capacity in 6 years. “We are no longer talking just about factories shutting down or lighting our homes with candles. Without computers, our entire economy would grind to a halt” (Daily Mail 6/11/08).

In Germany, carbon-trading schemes have brought in $832 million to the state but will not begin to offset the effects of job losses. Industry will leave. “Nothing will be produced here.... The lights will simply go out....” (Spiegelonline 7/17/08).