To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine (29 page)

We have to be more skeptical of climate scientists and the UN-APPOINTED International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) given the revelations of the “climategate” incident, discussed in chapter eight. As demonstrated in the hacked emails, some of the world’s top climate scientists unprofessionally and unethically tried to silence critics and avoid disclosing their own data.

Sound science depends on constructive criticism and a rigorous system of peer review. That’s why the argument that global warming
trends are “settled science” is so disturbing. In the academy, debates in every field rage for decades as trends and theories are revised according to new data. With the hockey stick trend in global warming now discredited and scientific climate models yielding hypothetical data at best, we are still debating the meaning of the information we have now. Unshakable predictions of a looming, carbon-induced doomsday look more and more like the anti-climatic Y2K panic.

The rational antidote to global warming hysteria is continued investigation into global climate change. Green conservatives should advocate better climate research through the National Science Foundation and other professional sources. To augment federal funding, privately funded prizes can help incentivize scientific breakthroughs. We could also offer prizes for breakthroughs in climate modeling, metrics, and measurement technology. Furthermore, we need fiscally responsible green conservatives who understand the need for more and better climate science to carefully scrutinize UN proposals, such as a recent demand for more than $60 billion to measure climate variables.

The American people should also continue to rely on the National Academy of Sciences to monitor progress in global climate change research. This is an incredibly intricate, fluid topic, notwithstanding the Left’s bogus claims that the science is settled. In fact, a 2010 article in the journal
Nature
by Olive Heffernan predicted that improving technology will cause scientists to admit to even
greater
uncertainty about the effects of climate change. The debate will really heat up when the next major IPCC report, due in 2013, moves beyond projected climate scenarios to consider explicit predictions.
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Although environmental radicals refuse to acknowledge it, we can prepare now to adapt to almost any future change in climate. Consider the argument made by Nigel Lawson in his book
An Appeal to Reason:

Green conservatives should be skeptical, prudent, and smart. We must demand complete objectivity from our scientists and our policymakers. Our country is blessed with the world’s best graduate schools and a critical mass of brilliant scientists and engineers. If carbon overload should lead to major problems, our continuing investment in science and technology will give us the best chance of averting or adapting to the consequences.

The next conservative U.S. government cannot ignore the environment. Conservative candidates must first convince centrists they can solve environmental problems, while the Left are only using the environment as an excuse for bigger government with higher taxes and more bureaucratic controls. Meanwhile, the conservative base should increase the visibility of its environmental positions.

For environmentalists of all persuasions, an optimal election is one in which both parties are equally committed to protecting the earth, while strenuously debating the right way to get it done. Conservatives must stop allowing the Left to own this issue. We must be prepared to offer an environmental agenda that breaks new ground and broadens the coalition of green conservatives. No one should be more committed to a healthy planet than green conservatives.

The green conservative platform should strive for a cleaner, greener world while protecting the freedom and dignity of all people and ensuring their right to a better economic future. Green conservatives seek a world where biodiversity is growing, not shrinking, and all ecosystems are vibrant and healthy. While some regulation will always be necessary, government intervention into our use of natural resources should not over-reach, nor should regulation violate citizens’ property rights.

Commerce and conservation can co-exist in harmony, with private philanthropy as the most powerful tool for biodiversity and habitat protection. Green conservatives should actively campaign for clean air and water, a non-toxic food chain, and the steady improvement of our quality of life.

The vision of a conservative conservation movement should be achieved through grassroots community networking. Green conservative action derives from the people, not the government. Green conservatives embrace flexibility, innovation, and speed while avoiding bureaucracy and red tape. Our commitment to future generations requires that we leave to them healthy oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams. Indeed, conservative core values require us to deliver to our children a world at least as bountiful and pristine as the one we inherited from our parents. Not only is this a moral imperative, it’s a winning political position.

With Steve Everley, Energy Policy Manager for American Solutions

 

 

 

A
merica suffers.

America has plenty of energy, but we send hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas to buy energy we could be producing domestically. This raises energy prices at home, forcing companies to shift jobs overseas. In one recent small business meeting American Solutions hosted in Akron, Ohio, manufacturers cited rising energy costs as a major reason for laying off workers, downsizing operations, and in some cases closing factories.

Washington elites have artificially restricted American energy resources, ranging from a 25-year ban on offshore drilling (which was recently overturned formally but remains active in practice) to an unofficial ban on the expansion of nuclear energy to the encouragement of frivolous environmental lawsuits. The result has been an
energy crisis created by environmental extremists, politicians, and bureaucrats who, for ideological reasons, favor high energy prices and severely limited energy consumption. They are willing to pay for this policy with foreign imports, killed American jobs, and substantial American reliance on foreign dictatorships. The vast majority of Americans—79 percent in an American Solutions survey—oppose this policy.

Ironically, many left-wing politicians advocate energy independence even as their own policies sabotage that goal. In fact, every U.S. President since Richard Nixon has rhetorically championed American energy, yet in the past thirty years we have become increasingly dependent on foreign energy.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Contrary to popular belief, America has more energy than any other nation on earth. All that’s keeping us from becoming energy independent is a lack of political will to do so.

Rather than picking winners and losers or paying off some industries by taxing others, our elected leaders should craft an energy policy based on a clear set of choices:

In an America that values both prosperity and happiness, both national security and the environment, we can have more energy
and a stronger economy while protecting the environment. Indeed, a growing economy requires affordable and reliable energy, which means more energy consumption, not less.

In contrast, in an America that values punishment through taxes and regulations, you will find high energy prices, less energy, and less economic growth.

Blessed with enormous energy reserves, America also has the scientists and engineers who could create unprecedented technological breakthroughs in all our energy sources. We must begin encouraging energy innovation, not discouraging energy production. As this chapter will show, we have both the resources and the capability to rapidly become energy independent.

America has more oil and natural gas than most people can even imagine. Unfortunately, our own politicians won’t let us use huge reserves of it.

Offshore we have an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and over 400 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, all of which was illegal to develop until Congress and the president let their offshore drilling bans expire amidst spiraling gas prices in 2008.

Onshore we have billions more barrels of oil, including potentially more than a trillion barrels locked away in shale in the Rocky Mountains. The Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming is considered the largest shale oil deposit in the world, with an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, or three times the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia.
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But nearly all those deposits are unused, since federal law bans most drilling for shale oil.

We also have so much natural gas that even many industry experts cannot develop a top-end estimate. In addition to the hundreds of trillions of cubic feet located offshore, we have exponentially more
locked away in ice. Known as methane hydrates, this frozen form of natural gas could make an enormous contribution to our energy independence: we have over 300,000 trillion cubic feet. To put that in perspective, if we could harness just 1 percent of that energy, we could satisfy America’s natural gas needs for more than 100 years.

And there is every reason to believe we have even more oil and natural gas. Methods of finding and developing these resources have become much more efficient even in the past ten years, resulting in the discovery of billions of additional barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of additional cubic feet of natural gas. Consider:

The new estimate at Marcellus is a good example of the power of technology. About eight years ago, engineers applied deep sea drilling techniques to natural gas exploration—they had learned
how to drill down 8,000 feet and then drill out horizontally four miles in every direction. Suddenly small pockets of shale gas became commercially viable, because you could find many pockets from one well. This new technology will revolutionize natural gas availability in the United States and possibly in Europe.

The potential for American jobs and American prosperity, however, is being delayed by regulations and litigation specifically designed to stop energy development.

Following the gasoline price spike of 2008 and American Solutions’ “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” petition drive, public anger forced politicians to allow the bans on offshore drilling to expire. But last year, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar delayed leasing in the Outer Continental Shelf by extending a comment period for six additional months. That period ended in September 2009, but as of this writing the Department of Interior has still not released the tabulated results of the public comments, another stalling tactic used by the Obama administration to thwart the will of the American people.