OPINION/COMMENTARY


The Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006: One Small Step for Energy Supply Prior to the elections, the House passed a strong offshore drilling bill, and the Senate passed a much more limited companion version. Both bills would open access to reserves of oil and natural gas. The House bill would do more to expand available energy resources than Senate version, which is only a little better than the status quo. Still, the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 (S. 3711) is a small, but worthwhile, step that deserves consideration by the House. Despite rising energy prices and increasing imports in recent years, the U.S. remains the only country on earth that has placed a significant percentage of its domestic energy potential off-limits. Oil and natural gas production is not allowed in 85 percent of America's territorial waters--essentially everywhere except the central and western Gulf of Mexico. A recent Department of the Interior study estimated that 19 billion barrels of oil and 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be found in these off-limits areas, and these initial energy inventories often prove to be low. To give a sense of perspective, 19 billion barrels equals about 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia, and 84 trillion cubic feet is enough natural gas to serve America's households for 15 years....


ANWR Oil worth $111,000,000,000 in Taxes and Royalties

Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA) of the House Resources Committee released figures on ANWR oil revenues to the Federal Government this week stating that a Congressional Research Report analyzing tax and royalty revenues from oil and gas production in the 10-02 Area of ANWR would raise $111 billion over 30 years for the Federal Government. That’s over $10 million injected into federal coffers everyday for over 30 years with zero cost the public. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) based its figures on the median prediction of 10.3 billion barrels of oil the USGS stated in its 1998 study of potential 10-02 Area reserves. Over $76 billion in income taxes would be levied on oil companies and $35 billion raised in royalties and bonus bids. At $60 per barrel (the current and predicted average price for oil this year) the CRS estimates $89 billion could be raised in income taxes. $111 billion dollars would be most probably the largest tax windfall the US Government would receive from a single source in its history. The CRS report went further in predicting revenues if the oil from the 10-02 Area of ANWR reached 16 billion barrels as the USGS report possibly states it could. At this amount the US Government could raise $118 billion in corporate income taxe and $55 billion in royalties. Oil from the 10-02 Area of ANWR is expected to reach a peak of 1 million barrels per day and keep the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in operation (which has a capacity of 2.1 million bpd) for over 30 years....


Carbon Dioxide’s Day in Court

Debates over global warming tend to create more heat than light, and that pattern is about to accelerate as lawyers for the environmental lobby go before the Supreme Court to argue that carbon-dioxide (CO-2) is the most pernicious “greenhouse gas.” Lawyers representing assorted cities, states and environmental organizations are asking the court to reject the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2003 decision that carbon dioxide (CO-2) is not a pollutant to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. That is because the problem with their position is twofold. First, CO-2 is a naturally occurring gas that supports life on this planet. We emit CO-2 every time we exhale, after all. Making a case against CO-2 without making a case against nature is like making an omelet without breaking the proverbial egg. It is impossible. Second, while our current sources of energy also emit CO-2, the scientific evidence that such CO-2 causes catastrophic global warming, and that this global warming is a threat to the earth, is tenuous at best. Global warming certainly deserves more study, but we should not undertake draconian policies based on the myth that this is an emergency that demands a drastic cutback in CO-2 emissions. Doing that would create a decidedly non-mythical humanitarian emergency by imposing unnecessary costs on the people who can least afford to pay them. Greenhouse gas limitations would spike the cost of energy, bad news for any consumer who has to fill a gas tank or heat a home, particularly for lower income families. On a global scale, forced cutbacks in CO-2 emissions would create an unconscionable setback for developing countries where economic development is just beginning to pull people out of poverty....


Global Warming Gag Order

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else. We reprint chunks of the letter below and the full text on OpinionJournal.com, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and Exxon Mobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers'." Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts." The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "Exxon Mobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive. This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations....


Conservation vs. Development in the Western United States

Land trusts are now protecting more land than gets developed across the western United States each year, according to a new census by the Land Trust Alliance, which represents 1,667 local, state and national land trusts. When this data is compared with the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on new land developed in the United States, it now appears that conservation efforts have protected around 2.6 million acres annually nationwide, compared to approximately 2.2 million acres converted each year to developed land.1 This trend is even more dramatic in the West, where approximately 450,000 acres have been conserved annually in recent years, and 330,000 acres have been developed. These new trends are surprising. But even more surprising is the variation among western states. While annually conservation still trails development in most of the West, in Montana and Colorado conservation efforts now outpace development each year by more than five to one. This comparison of these two datasets demonstrates that conservation now rivals development as a force shaping the land and communities in much of the western United States. In both cases, development and conservation, these changes are envisioned to be relatively permanent, since conservation by acquisition or easement is usually defined to be in perpetuity. But these trends also raise intriguing and important questions about priorities, efficiency, rationality, equity, permanence and change in conservation and development in the West. At the Bill Lane Center for the Study of the North American West, we continue to follow and examine these trends and invite you to send any insights and comments and questions on this to jonchristensen@stanford.edu. Jon Christensen is a research fellow at the Center for Environmental Science and Policy and a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Stanford University....


Animal Rights High Priest Undermines His Acolytes

An unprecedented admission from its intellectual godfather is sending shock waves through the animal rights movement this week. In a documentary broadcast Monday night on British television, Princeton Professor Peter Singer acknowledged that some medical testing involving animals -- traditionally pegged as an animal rights no-no -- is in fact morally acceptable. Coming from virtually anyone else, such a statement wouldn't be much of a story. (Most people understand that some research on living creatures is and has always been essential to scientific advancement.) But Singer is the author of Animal Liberation -- the 1975 philosophical treatise that inspired generations of animal rights zealots, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) founder Ingrid Newkirk. Singer's admission came when Dr. Tipu Aziz -- whose research using primates has led to treatments for people suffering from Parkinson's disease -- told him on camera that "to date 40,000 people have been made better with [the procedure Dr. Aziz has developed], and ... I would guess only 100 monkeys were used at a few laboratories." Singer replied: Well, I think if you put a case like that, clearly I would have to agree that was a justifiable experiment ... It is clear at least some animal research does have benefits. I would certainly not say that no animal research could be justified and the case you have given sounds like one that is justified.


The Bloomberg Diet

ou might think that officials in New York City, which has more people than all but 11 states, had enough to do providing basic city services. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that what New Yorkers really need is a better diet, and he's just the man to order it. A politician's work is never done. At the mayor's urging this week, New York's Board of Health voted to ban restaurant use of artificial trans fats, those liquid oils made solid through hydrogenation and found in all manner of fried, baked and processed foods. Many of these products aren't particularly healthy, but then neither are many products people enjoy that contain sugar and caffeine, substances that New York hasn't outlawed. At least not yet. "We're just trying to make food safer," said Mayor Bloomberg, who nixed smoking in bars a few years back. The city's concern for the health of residents is understandable, but trans fats are not E. coli (or even secondhand smoke), and the federal Food and Drug Administration still considers these chemically modified food ingredients perfectly safe for consumption. Could it be that Mayor Mike has been taken in by activist Gotham health czars and national Naderite "watchdog" outfits like Michael Jacobson's Center for Science in the Public Interest, among others pushing a larger agenda? You wouldn't know it from the media coverage, but the science on the dangers of trans fats is still being debated, which helps explain FDA approval of the ingredient. It also explains why the American Heart Association, while no fan of trans fats, was critical of the New York proposal and fears it may backfire if food outlets revert to even less healthy alternatives....