Find It

Obama Panders on Alaska Land

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., Sept. 29, 2010 – I love Alaska. The beauty of the mountain ranges, rivers, islands, and glaciers is stunning. The diversity of habitat and wildlife inspires wonder. The summer days and winter nights are filled with mystery. The people, of all ethnicities and political persuasions, are endearing and quirky. My kinda place.

But anyone who tells you that the Section 1002 land on the northern coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is pristine and worthy of protection as wilderness either doesn’t know Alaska or has a political agenda that has nothing to do with preserving wilderness. And that’s just what the Obama administration and the Interior Department are telling us.

According to The Energy Daily, Interior is proposing to examine three areas inside ANWR, including the land set aside by Congress in 1980 in Section 1002 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, for protection from development. The 1002 land consists of 1.5 million acres, out of a total of some 19 million acres in ANWR, as the only place in the refuge where oil and gas exploration can occur. For that to happen, Congress must agree to allow drilling, which it has not done in 30 years.

The action by the administration appears to me a clear case of the administration trying to prevent what may be a Republican Congress next year from another attempt to drill for oil and gas on the coastal land. The White House is also throwing a green bone to some environmentalists, having failed to persuade the American people to support global warming legislation.

There is little question that the 1002 area is rich in fossil resources, particularly crude oil. Legendary fights over drilling in the area have punctuated the history of Alaska since Congress passed the Alaska lands act. A wilderness designation would sound the bell for another round.

Environmentalists have tried from the beginning to paint a picture of the area as wilderness of the first class, what some have called “America’s Serengeti.” Most readers have probably seen beautiful photographs of ANWR, taken from the coastal plain looking south to the Brooks Range. Drilling opponents have used these dramatic images to make their case for the pristine nature of the territory. That’s essentially trick photography, showing precisely where oil and gas exploration is forbidden.

Looking north from the Brooks Range across the coastal plain reveals a far different picture: a flat, featureless plain, pocked with tiny ponds, crossed with snowmobile trails, including more than a few abandoned snowmobiles. On the margin of the land and the Beaufort Sea is the village of Kaktovik, largely but not entirely populated by Eskimo people, complete with a small airstrip. To the west is a large, dominating silver structure that looks much like a drive-in theater screen. This is an abandoned remnant of the 1950s DEW (Distant Early Warning) Line that the U.S. erected along the 69^th parallel to warn of incoming Soviet bombers flying the Polar route to U.S. targets, signaling atomic war. The DEW line became operational in late July 1957 and was almost immediately obsolete. The USSR launched Sputnik into orbit in early October.

Without going into the whole question of energy exploration in wildlife refuges, which is common, the 1002 land does not meet any legal or traditional definition of wilderness. In 1935, the founders of The Wilderness Society said, “All we desire to save from invasion is that extremely minor fraction of outdoor America which yet remains free from mechanical sights and sounds and smell.” The 1964 federal Wilderness Act states, “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

To my mind, the question is not about energy. The amount of oil likely to lie under the 1002 land, while commercially valuable, is hardly sufficient to change the overall picture of U.S. oil production. North Slope production has been declining for decades and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline is slowly emptying. ANWR oil would keep it going for some additional years. But that’s not very important from a national perspective.

It’s not about environmental protection. The 1.5 million acres open to exploration is tiny. The 1980 act protected some 56 million acres of Alaska not already under other protections. The U.S. government, not the oil industry, owns most of Alaska, and has been a fairly responsible steward.

In my mind, the question about drilling on the coastal plain of the North Slope is about intellectual honesty, respect for law, and political pandering. The land in dispute is not wilderness. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t touch my heart and I doubt if it would touch yours. Alaska’s true wilderness, which is literally breathtaking, is not open to oil and gas exploration. Interior, if it attempts to designate the 1002 lands as wilderness, will be flouting the law and I would hope that Congress would reign in the executive branch. As for pandering, well, that’s what presidents seem to do, and Obama appears to be among the best.

MIT Report Buries Breeders, Reprocessing

By Kennedy Maize

Let us hope that the false hope of fast breeder reactors fueled with plutonium reprocessed from spent light water reactor fuel is finally properly interred. A new report from the same MIT crew that examined the future of nuclear power in 2003 buries the pipe dream of breeder reactors, or, at least, puts it in cold storage. Since Walter Zinn created EBR I in 1949, the rationale for breeders has been that uranium will be in short supply and costly, so something that creates more plutonium than it uses uranium will be necessary to keep nukes alive.

Breeders require reprocessing the spent fuel to recover the plutonium, an expensive, environmentally dangerous, and proliferation-prone technology that the U.S. correctly eschewed from the Ford administration through the Clinton administration, but which the George W. Bush administration sought to revive on an international scale. The Obama administration has largely backed away from the Bush policy.

The fundamental justification for fast breeders is flawed, says the report by MIT’s Energy Initiative, with a blue-ribbon advisory panel spanning the ideological spectrum from Jonathan Lash to John Sununu. The MIT study looks carefully at uranium supply and concludes that there is plenty U to go around for as far as anyone can reasonably see. The report – “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” – comes not to praise reprocessing but to bury it. “For decades,” says the report, “the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity.”

The pursuit of fast breeders, in the U.S. and elsewhere, has been a heedless chase. Ernie Moniz, director of the MIT energy program and co-chairman of the study, said, “The failure to understand the extent of the uranium resource was a very big deal” for determining which fuel cycles were developed and the development schedule. Moniz, a physicist, is a former Department of Energy official in the Clinton administration.

With the historic assumption of limited uranium supply, the fast spectrum breeder had great appeal. Even then, enthusiasm for fast reactors glossed over the issues of scale and cost. An MIT press release accompanying the report says, “But it would take a conventional light-water reactor 30 years just to provide the plutonium to start one such breeder reactor and so far, such systems have not been found to be economically viable.”

Should the nation decide to make a change in direction in the ncuelar fuel cycle, the MIT report suggests examining enriched uranium-initiated breeders (with a unitary conversion rate). Either natural or depleted uranium could be added to the core at the same rate enriched uranium is burned up, and producing no excess nuclear material. This, says MIT, “is a much simple and more efficient self-sustaining fuel cycle.”

The major policy thrust of the MIT report is to keep on the LWR path for the next 100 years, while rigorously studying other approaches. A fuel cycle direction change, says the report, takes “50 to 100 years.” Charles Forsberg, MIT nuclear engineering researcher, said, “There has been very little research on the fuel cycle for about 30 years. People hadn’t gone back and looked at the underlying assumptions.”

“A key message from our work,” says the report, “is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed LWR spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.” There is plenty of uranium to sustain even the most optimistic worldwide nuclear power scenarios “for much of this century at least,” says the report.

What about those countries, such as France and Japan, which have been pushing breeders and fuel recycle? “The benefits to resource extension and to waste management of limited recycling in LWRs using mixed oxide fuel as is being done in some countries are minimal,” concludes the MIT study. The cost of uranium is about 2%-4% of the cost of nuclear electricity, notes the study. “Our analysis of uranium mining costs versus cumulative production in a world with ten times as many LWRs and each LWR operating for 60 years indicates a probably 50% increase in uranium costs. Such a modest increase in uranium costs would not significantly impact nuclear power economics.”

The End of the Climate War

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., Sept. 7, 2010 — The time has come for all of us to abandon the sterile, and now futile, brawl over massive federal legislation to deal with the alleged problem of global warming. For the advocates of measures such as carbon taxes, cap-and-trade (a second-best tax), or Environmental Protection Agency command-and-control regulation, the game is up. The 111^th Congress has rejected the green agenda, which never got any traction with the general public. Nothing on the political horizon suggests that judgment will change in the next couple of years.

For the most-shrill advocates for a comprehensive greenhouse gas reduction policy and the most-badgering opponents, the time has come to lay down arms, stop personal attacks, cease endless carping, and try to come to some agreements on where to go next. I’ve long been a skeptic of the extreme green agenda on climate issues, but have never countenanced ad hominem attacks from any direction.

My chief objection to the warming agenda is that it has seldom been about whether the earth is warming, but about how to use that possibility – or even certainty in many minds – to advance a political vision for environmental and energy policy that existed before the twists-and-turns of climate science. That agenda, put too simply perhaps, is to take the world off fossil fuels. But I believe that is a pipe dream, and not even a good dream at that, particularly if you live in those parts of the world that heat and cook with twigs, branches, and the dried dung of ruminants.

The environmental movement lost its way with the climate issue. As political scientist Walter Russell Mead (channeled by George Will) wrote recently in his blog, greens “failed because they lost touch with the core impetus and values of the environmental movement.” Mead elaborated, “The greens have forgotten where they come from….Environmentalists were skeptics of the One Big Fix. Science could never capture all the side effects and the unintended consequences.”

My own environmental views were born of what I saw as a journalist covering energy issues and politics. Most of what “the establishment” applauded, I found wanting. In particular, as I learned more and more about the Tennessee Valley Authority, the more skeptical I became of conventional wisdom, left and right. I also learned to hold onto my wallet when I hear the term “consensus.”

On the other hand, a considerable amount of the climate skepticism has been fueled by large, rich business interests, attempting to protect their territory. True, but so what? I’m already tired of the latest wheeze, that the Koch brothers single (or double)-handedly killed climate legislation. Or that anyone who doubts the gospel according to Joe Romm is in the pay of “Big Oil.” It’s not as if the environmental community doesn’t have resources, and didn’t use them, in their failed legislative and public opinion campaigns. Then there is the “blame Obama” mantra. He didn’t do enough. He promised. Whine, whine, whine. Nonsense. Let’s discuss issues.

Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute has the proper post mortum. He told Ezra Klein of the Washington Post recently, “I think the attacks from the greens on the White House and the White House’s response all miss the point. There was no amount of speechifying or arm twisting Obama could have done that would’ve changed that vote significantly. And vice versa, the green groups hired some of the best advertisers and lobbyists and spent $100 million. They didn’t do a bad job. They had arguably the best mobilization environmental groups have ever done in the history of the environmental movement. It was the proposal itself that was impossible for this Congress, and any Congress in recent memory, to pass.”

Where to go from here? Clearly, there’s no chance to resurrect the prior green political agenda. As Shellenberger said, “I think that this is the end of cap-and-trade for a long time. It’s the fourth time it’s failed since 2003. We did a vote count in 2008, where we interviewed green lobbyists about their vote count. We got to about 35. When [Harry] Reid said they couldn’t get to 60, he was putting the best face on it. So I don’t think cap-and-trade is coming back for the next decade.”

I’d suggest that all the interests sit down and start discussing some common ground. There can be no doubt that mankind can affect the global environment, for good and for ill. I would regard the purposeful extinction of the brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys), at least in the U.S., as a good thing, for example. Unfortunately, I suspect that man-made extinction is impossible.

Global warming might be in the cards. It might be good or bad or irreversible. Chances are there will be winners and losers, as some have been saying for decades, including the late Roger Revelle. There are small steps we can take – remember “no cost, low cost” from the dismal days of DSM? – that are the beginnings of a useful approach to climate warming, but are also reversible if called for. There are policies that make sense in their own right, for saving energy and reducing our impact on the planet, regardless of the state of the global thermometer.

But let’s lose the grandiose, atomic-bomb approach to climate policy, what many have come to call the United Nations model, typified by the failed Kyoto Protocol and the stillborn U.S. cap-and-trade legislation. In the process, let’s lose the circumlocution of “climate change.” If every change that happens to the climate is the result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, then nothing is falsifiable and there is no science there.

I like the approach that Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry is taking. Here’s what she said last month in Houston Chronicle science writer Eric Berger’s SciGuy blog, commenting on the collapse of the green political agenda: “Frankly I think this is a good thing that it’s fallen apart in the short term so everyone can sit back and reflect a little bit more on what we should be doing — to try and really understand where our common interests lie and maybe get away from the UN Model and understand the unintended consequences of some of the policies people are talking about. There’s some no-brainer things that people can be doing, and I hope some of this can get started. But in terms of these big, huge far-reaching policies … the work that needs to be done is really in the economic and political arena to figure out what actually makes sense to do.”

Of the less-hyperbolic of the greenhouse skeptics, Curry is sympathetic, despite her views on the veracity of the science. “It’s a grassroots effort,” she says. “These are people who are interested, they want to see accountability. They have a certain amount of expertise and they want to play around with climate data. There’s no particularly evil motives behind all this.”

That’s a good place to start.

Election Means Major Energy Policy Changes

By Kennedy Maize

Washington, D.C., Sept. 3, 2010 – Look for significant changes in the way Congress addresses energy policy and legislation when the 112^th Congress convenes in January 2011. By most expert accounts, Democrats are going to suffer major losses at the polls in November, with many pundits predicting a Republican takeover of the House and some suggesting the GOP will capture the Senate as well.

Even if the Republicans only succeed in narrowing the partisan balance in the House and Senate, the environment for energy legislation will become far more difficult. Major changes are inevitable in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato, director of the U.Va. Center for Politics, has the GOP picking up 47 House seats, enough to swing control to the Republicans. The GOP would then have 225 seats and the Democrats 210. That means the energy and commerce regime of California’s politically-adroit liberal Henry Waxman will end, along with the influence of his fellow travelers, particularly Ed Markey, the grandstanding liberal from Massachusetts. Remember Waxman-Markey from the 111^th Congress? Forget it for the 112^th.

With Republicans in control of the House and the committee, chances of passage of any kind of cap-and-trade greenhouse gas legislation are nil. Even if the Republicans narrow the margin, but the Democrats retain control, the chances of major energy and greenhouse legislation are slim and none. Slim looks like he’s leaving the room. Waxman had to bend arms and cross palms with bacon fat to win his eponymous legislation. There likely won’t be votes for it under any circumstances.

If the GOP wins the House, who will rule the committee? Good question. Until BP’s Macondo well blew up, and BP executives threw up all over themselves, the answer was easy: former committee chairman Joe Barton of Texas. But Barton has apparently been banished to the Republicans’ political woodshed for stupidly telling the truth during committee hearings, defending BP against what amounted to Obama administration extortion of the $20 billion fund to recompense losses due to the well blowout. Barton subsequently was told privately that his chances of repeating as chairman of the all-powerful committee had dissolved in oily BP-water.

Barton’ sin – and it was large – was in giving the Democrats the chance to seize the day, or week, and unmercifully beat up the Republicans as tools of “Big Oil.” Sinners must pay, and political sinners pay politically. The GOP line, uttered by Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, is that the House Republican Steering Committee will make the decision on where Barton sits in the committee. But the betting is that he won’t be sitting with a gavel in his hand.

So that leaves? It’s not entirely clear. My bet is on Texan Ralph Hall, who hails from Red River Valley country. First elected in 1980 as a conservative Democrat and hunting buddy of long-time Democratic chairman John Dingell of Michigan, Hall insisted up until 2003 that he would not switch parties and become a Republican. But former House GOP leader and fellow Texan Tom DeLay pulled off a redistricting in the Lone Star State that put Hall’s career as a Democrat in jeopardy. So Hall became a Republican and easily won reelection.

The House GOP has a history of rewarding party switchers. Former Rep. Billy Tauzin, elected to Congress in 1980 as a Democrat, switched parties 1995 when the Republicans took over after the 1994 Gingrich revolution. He was chairman of the House energy committee from 2001 to 2004, when he became a drug industry lobbyist. Ironically, Tauzin tried in vain to get his son elected to succeed him in the House, but Billy the Third lost to Democrat Charlie Melancon, who got a seat on the energy committee. Melancon is now the Democratic nominee running against incumbent Republican Senator David Vitter, meaning he has left the House. Vitter has a large lead in the Senate race.

Over in the Senate, the energy committee will see a remarkable transformation, no matter which party controls the chamber come January. The most dramatic changes will come on the Republican side, where four of the 10 committee Republicans won’t be in the new Congress. That list includes Lisa Murkowski, who was the ranking Republican and likely chairman in a GOP Senate (she lost a primary), Sam Brownback of Kansas (running for governor), Bob Bennett of Utah (lost his nomination in a caucus vote), and Jim Bunning of Kentucky (retired). Republicans are expected to win all of those open races. On the Democratic side, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota is retiring, the only committee Democrat leaving Congress.

Larry Sabato predicts the GOP will pick up eight net Senate seats, and maybe nine, with 10 also a possibility. Ten means GOP control. In that case, North Carolina’s Richard Burr would be in the seniority line for the chairmanship. But I suspect he would turn the job down, as North Carolina is not a big energy producing state (sorry, Jim Rogers) and Burr would be in line to chair the Veterans Affairs committee, in a state where veterans are very important and Fort Bragg keeps pumping out more. If Burr were running in 2012, I suspect he might take the energy chairmanship, because it gives access to prodigious amounts of campaign cash. But he’s running this fall – in a fairly tight race that Congressional Quarterly rates as “likely Republican.”

If not Burr, then my guess is John Barrasso, a Wyoming physician who is fairly junior on the committee. He was first appointed to replace Republican Sen. Craig Thomas, who died in office, and then won a 2008 special election for the remainder of Thomas’s term. Barrasso is up for reelection in 2012. Barrasso is 48 and has focused his attention on health care issues. But Wyoming is the nation’s leading coal-producing state, with oil and gas and other minerals that fall under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Eight Republican pickups would mean a body consisting of 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and two Independents (Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman and Vermont’s Bernie Sanders) who caucus with the Democrats. In that case, the current chairman, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, would keep the job. That would extend the long spell that legislators from the Land of Enchantment have had on the energy committee. Since 2002, either former Sen. Pete Domenici, a Republican, or Democrat Bingaman, have been chairmen of the committee.

What’s the likelihood of the Republicans gaining both the House and the Senate? U.Va.’s Sabato notes in his Crystal Ball political blog, “Since World War II, the House of Representatives has flipped parties on six occasions (1946, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1994, and 2006). Every time, the Senate flipped too, even when it had not been predicted to do so. These few examples do not create an iron law of politics, but they do suggest an electoral tendency.”

I’ll be out of the country for most of October, when the politicking gets particularly hot and heavy. I’ll weigh in again on the subject of Congressional energy politics after the election. Stay tuned for what promises to be a wild and crazy ride.

About

Find It

Recently Written

Archives

Obama Panders on Alaska Land

MIT Report Buries Breeders, Reprocessing

The End of the Climate War

Election Means Major Energy Policy Changes

Subscribe to POWERnews