Oil Sands Pipeline

My letter to the Beaumont Enterprise editor:

The Texas Sierra Club is trying to make political hay of the Horizon disaster in the Gulf, and use the public sentiment to block a pipeline project that is necessary for the continued economic growth in Southeast Texas. TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline will bring synthetic and blended synthetic Canadian Crude Oil extracted and upgraded from Oil Sands to Nederland for use in local refineries. Currently the local refineries rely heavily on oil received from Mexico and Venezuela. Since these countries have nationalized their energy sectors, their production has been on a steady decline, and must be replaced with a more reliable source. The Canadian crude oil intended for Texas markets will be upgraded and/or blended to be as clean as or cleaner than the Mexican and Venezuelan crudes that they replace to ensure that the refineries can use them. Without this Canadian oil, some the refineries that thousands of Southeast Texans depend on for jobs may be at risk.

The Incompatibility of UN Goals

Tonight was the premier of Not Evil Just Wrong, Irish director Phelim McAleer's new documentary that challenges the Climate Change religious beliefs and specifically, the claims of An Inconvenient Truth. I watched it streamed online courtesy of Andrew Breitbart. Overall, the film was somewhat disappointing to me, long on emotion and mood, and short on details, but central point is one that needs to be said more often. Environmental controls, especially those that restrict carbon dioxide emissions, create poverty. Since the UN has been so bad at achieving it's original goal, world peace, it's primary activities in recent years have been centered around trying to alleviate poverty and fighting CO2 emissions. I question the ability of the UN to do either, but the combination is impossible. Three things are necessary to get third world countries into the first world: a stable political climate, economic freedom, and cheap energy. Restricting CO2 emissions eliminates two of those necessary legs of development. Giving in to the extreme environmentalists will not only hurt the ability to alleviate poverty for workers or the developing world, it will likely create more poverty.

Real Live Homegrown Terrorism

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has been extremely concerned about homegrown terrorism - putting pro-life activists, anti-government/anti-Federal Reserve activists, and returning veterans on terrorist watch lists. There have been a couple of criminal activities that have been painted as terrorism to ensure that these lists are taken more seriously. Meanwhile, in Washington, a real-live homegrown terrorist organization is active and committing acts of terrorism. The Environmental Liberation Front tore down a radio tower in Everett Washington, because they thought it might mess with trumpeter swan habitat. The ELF was once the #1 homegrown terrorist organization in the country. Now, as terrorism goes, this was relatively minor, and some of the individual criminal acts by "right-wing" extremists has been worse. But there has been no organized right-wing terrorist plot to justify the villainization of legitimate protesters. No matter how politicized and anti-citizen the Department of Homeland Security becomes, I hope local law enforcement pays attention to the real terrorists, and lets those who have legitimate complaints about government protest without harassment by law enforcement.

Cow Fart Tax

The EPA wants to apply Title V regulations from the Clean Air Act to agriculture. According to the Florida Farm Bureau, who ran the numbers, the Environmental Protection Agency want to make all ranchers with more than 50 head of cattle, dairy farmers with more than 25 cows, and rice farmer with more than 35 acres (plus others) file a Title V emissions report for the methane their livestock or crops release. That's right, ranchers will have to report their cow farts to the government, and pay a tax based on them.

Most of the published outrage has been about taxes, which are significant, but as anyone who has worked in refineries or chemical plants will tell you, the taxes are a small part of the Title V problem. Title V permitting is a long and tedious process that requires submitting a permit proposal to the government, who then sends it back to the company with their suggestions, and the process repeats itself until they can come to an agreement. One facility where I worked had 5 people who worked full time on Title V permitting for several years. This process would bankrupt all but the large corporate ranchers and farmers. If it passes, it will put all of the remaining independent for-profit farmers and ranchers out of business. Only corporate agriculture and really small-scale agriculture by hobbyists will remain.

God save the American Farmer!