Just yesterday I posted that the Obama cult demonstrates an increasing disconnect from and disregard of economics, but this example of disrespecting the American public takes the cake.

[Associated Press] Secretary Steven Chu came out swinging Friday against a House bill that would repeal a 2007 federal law effectively outlawing older forms of incandescent bulbs—an effort at energy conservation that has inflamed a wide swath of Americans who don’t care for the more expensive alternatives.

In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Chu said the more-efficient bulbs required would save consumers money over the life of the product, even if the up-front price is higher.

“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” he said.

Talk about the nanny state run amok. Sec. Chu is going to have to point out to us which section of the U.S. Constitution empowers the government to judge what private spending is or is not “wasting” money, and what gives them the power to trump decisions by individual consumers.

Not to mention, I’ve owned my fair share of these mercury-laden “efficient” bulbs and found them lacking – many times the price of typical incandescents yet having lasted not much longer.

A common definition of hubris is when panels of unelected bureaucrats believe they can make better economic decisions than 300 million consumers in the marketplace. But worse, not only are our they not Constitutionally empowered, but their expertise is typically incorrect and filled with unintended consequences.

Finally, I think this retort by Mark Steyn on Team Obama’s hypocrisy is great.

More to the point, I wonder if Secretary Chu has any idea how stupid this argument sounds from an administration that has wasted more of other people’s money than anybody else on the planet. Secretary Chu and his colleagues took a trillion dollars of “stimulus” and, for all the stimulating it did, might as well have given it in large bills to Charlie Sheen to snort coke off his hookers’ bellies with. (In my weekend column, I touch on only the most lurid and outrageous of the government’s many smart investment decisions: its use of stimulus dollars to stimulate the Mexican coffin industry.)

Chu on that come election day.

With a cost-benefit analysis system as obtuse and intangible as this, what’s the point of having one? Ah, but that indeed is the point, and exemplifies everything that is wrong with liberal government — all things are executed using the basis of immeasurable metrics.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal commenting on President Obama’s recent executive order for all agencies to implement a cost-benefit system prior to enacting regulation:

No sooner had Mr. Obama told the bureaucracies to subject all regulations to a cost-benefit test than the bureaucrats began telling reporters that they are already a model of modern efficiency, thank you very much. Among many others, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that it was “confident” it wouldn’t need to alter a single current or pending rule. “In fact, EPA’s rules consistently yield billions in cost savings that make them among the most cost-effective in the government.”

Perhaps the EPA’s confidence owes to a little-noticed proviso in Mr. Obama’s order. When the agencies weigh costs and benefits, the order says, they should always consider “values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts.”

Talk about economic elasticities. Equity and fairness can be defined to include more or less anything as a benefit. Under this calculus, a rule might pass Mr. Obama’s cost-benefit test if it imposes $999 billion in hard costs but supposedly results in a $1 trillion increase in human dignity, whatever that means in bureaucratic practice. Another rule could pass muster even if it reduces work and investment, as long as it also lessens income inequality.

Any cost-benefit analysis depends to some extent on matters of judgment, but typically the criteria are more economically tangible, such as how to price risk or the discount rate. No business would recognize Mr. Obama’s version, since his “values” loophole boils down to a preference for bigger government. The danger is that his executive order will transform an important tool to check excessive regulation into a way to justify whatever rule the permanent bureaucracy wants.

Read the rest. It’s already happening in the EPA.

Hey, we can say no, but other countries will say yes. And, similarly, foolish governments and politicos, such as Florida’s Charlie Crist, can write legislation all they want denying American companies the ability to drill offshore, but that won’t do a damn thing for companies based in the UK, or China for that matter. Here’s Greg Pollowitz:

Is there a category for jobs that just float away?

Last week, Diamond Offshore announced that it was sending the Ocean Endeavor rig from the Gulf of Mexico to Egypt. This week it announced that it was pulling the Ocean Confidence out of the Gulf of Mexico and sending it to the Congo.

Bloomberg reports that the Congo project is expected to generate $234 million in total revenue — revenue and jobs that should have been created in the Untied States.

Besides the actual production of oil, workers on the rigs and people that supply the rigs will be adversely affected. According to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association:

• Each drilling platform averages 90 to 140 employees at any one time (2 shifts per day), and 180 to 280 for 2 2-week shifts
• Each E&P [exploration and production] job supports 4 other positions
• Therefore, 800 to 1400 jobs per idle rig platform are at risk
• Wages for those jobs average $1,804/weekly; potential for lost wages is huge, over $5 to $10 million for 1 month—per platform.
• Wages lost could be over $165 to $330 million/month for all 33 platforms

There are also impacts to people who supply the rigs:

• Supply boats — 2 boats per rig with day rates of $15,000/day per boat — $30,000/day
• Impacts to other supplies and related support services (i.e., welders, divers, caterers, transportation, etc.)

This is the problem with the Administration’s overly restrictive moratorium. Rigs are portable and they will go where the work is. When a rig leaves the Gulf, not only the jobs on the rig are endangered, but also the jobs of those who supply the rig. As noted above, each job in oil and gas exploration and production supplies 4 other positions.

Don’t look now but mainstream media (aka the lamestream media) is beginning to throw up the white flag and admit that their cure for supposed man-made global warming and our reliance on foreign energy sources is just to use less electricity.

How will this happen? First by guilt, then by force.

In the heat wave, the case against air conditioning

By Stan Cox
Sunday, July 11, 2010; B03

Washington didn’t grind to a sweaty halt last week under triple-digit temperatures. People didn’t even slow down. Instead, the three-day, 100-plus-degree, record-shattering heat wave prompted Washingtonians to crank up their favorite humidity-reducing, electricity-bill-busting, fluorocarbon-filled appliance: the air conditioner.

This isn’t smart. In a country that’s among the world’s highest greenhouse-gas emitters, air conditioning is one of the worst power-guzzlers. The energy required to air-condition American homes and retail spaces has doubled since the early 1990s. Turning buildings into refrigerators burns fossil fuels, which emits greenhouse gases, which raises global temperatures, which creates a need for — you guessed it — more air-conditioning.

A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life for months on end. Less than half a century ago, America thrived with only the spottiest use of air conditioning. It could again.

Just consume less energy! What a novel idea. Ignore that people in developing nations would gladly slit your throat to enjoy the energy consumption advantages you have thanks to 200-plus years of liberty and innovation (converting to horsepower – Americans use about 4.5 horsepower per capita, while their counterparts in Pakistan and India use less than 0.25.”[ Courtesy of Power Hungry by Robert Bryce) Ignore that there's a direct relationship between the amount of electricity a country generates and its GDP (America is top in both electrical generation and GDP, followed by China and then the Western world with a high rank by Russia too [Bryce again]). No, no, our lifestyle, says this pretentious Ghia worshiper, is too “lavish.” No doubt his next commentary will extol the virtues of horse-drawn carriages (while ignoring disease from horse manure concentrations) and candles to replace light bulbs (ignoring productivity loss, among other things).

Once again the Greens’ definition of progress is technological regression.

How will this be done?

First by guilt trips by those like Mr. Cox. Then next via “smart utilities,” which is a fancy way of saying that your power company, under fiat by the government, will dictate the amount of energy you may use since we Americans aren’t like Pakistanis and Indians and can thus afford the energy prices. It’s no joke, unfortunately. It’s being seriously considered by the Leftist Greens and their government enablers.

[WND] In “Climategate [A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam],” [Brian] Sussman warns readers about the coming Smart Grid, Smart Meters, Smart Thermostats and Energy Star appliances – which he says will allow unseen bureaucrats to regulate all of the appliances in America’s homes.

“This is not fantasy,” says Sussman, an award-winning television meteorologist, “This is reality. Smart Meters have already replaced the whirling, old-fashioned electric meters on the side of millions of houses in America – they monitor electricity usage minute-by-minute and can be read remotely. The remote controlled Smart Thermostats are being installed as well and further enable bureaucratic control the temperature of your abode. The Smart Grid, which was mandated in the 2007 Energy bill and funded with ‘stimulus’ money, is coming next. The grid will possess interactive broadband capabilities to further control all of the new generation Energy Star appliances you will be forced to purchase – like your washer, dryer, water heater, and even your flat screen TV.”

Sussman notes the pandering tone of the Washington Post piece. “Look at the arguments presented in this story,” says Sussman. “In a post-AC nation, we’re told that ‘Congress will adjourn for the summer, giving ‘tea partiers’ the smaller government they seek,’ or that on a hot summer evening we’ll all trade the electrical stove for the barbeque and eat on the porch. Do the environmentalists and their media partners think Americans are that easy to fool?

“I live in California,” Sussman adds. “On certain summer evenings it’s illegal to have a barbeque. Guess will just have to stick to a salad.”

And why are the Greens forced to do this? Because it’s not about the environment or “saving” the planet from imaginary tidal waves swallowing San Francisco after polar icecap thaws, but it’s about control, and socialism, and collectivism, and increasing the power of the state. It’s about eroding personal liberty, and what’s more liberating that power consumption?

The Greens know that the facts are coming out, and the future of renewables simply cannot mathematically replace our need for oil, coal, natural gas (or nuclear) fuels. Wind and solar, for example, fail miserably in how we measure utility consumption: power density, energy density, cost, and scale.

For instance, again quoting from Robert Bryce:

The energy sprawl of renewables can easily be illustrated by comparing the footprint of a typical U.S. nuclear power plant, in this case, the South Texas Project, with that of wind and solar. Using conservative calculations—which means counting all 12,000 acres of the South Texas Project’s land area as part of the two-reactor plant’s footprint—yields a power density of about 300 horsepower per acre (56 watts per square meter). Compare that with wind power, which produces about 6.4 horsepower per acre (1.2 watts per square meter). Or look at solar photovoltaic, which produces about 36 horsepower per acre (6.7 watts per square meter). The results: Wind power requires about 45 times as much land to produce a comparable amount of power as nuclear, and solar photovoltaic power requires about 8 times as much land as nuclear. The corn ethanol scam is even worse, requiring about 1,150 times as much land as nuclear. … Thus, if the world’s policymakers really want to quit using carbon-based fuels, then we will need to find the energy equivalent of 23.5 Saudi Arabias every day, and all of that energy must be carbon-free.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. Because of intermittent breeze and sunlight, both solar and wind must be backed by traditional power sources, which as the Danes have learned, makes such power sources unsustainable without huge subsidies from government.

But that won’t stop the subsidies, of course. But just be prepared for the next bi-pronged attack of guilt and artificial outages.

Have you ever noticed how Democrats brag that renewable energy — i.e., Green Jobs — will create more jobs than traditional — i.e., petroleum — energy jobs? If so, have you extrapolated the next question: “Why is that?” Simple, because green energy is so inefficient it will take more workers to produce the same kilowatt of energy than that created from oil and gas! Thus the Democrats curious definition of progress becomes taking up energy sources — wind, solar, water — that we had already progressed past a couple hundred years ago.

Driving this point home are a pair of articles, the first from a Heritage Foundation study on wind power:

The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis projects that an RES (renewable electricity standard) would:

• Raise electricity prices by 36 percent for households and 60 percent for industry;
• Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
• Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four;
• Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and
• Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.

The reality is if electricity created by wind and other renewables were cost competitive, consumers would use more of it without a federal law to force consumption.

Call this the “A-Ha” moment!

Recent experience with the mandate for renewable fuels like corn ethanol also suggests significant cost increases as well as technical shortcomings. Proponents for wind and solar argue that the two energy sources are still in the infant industry phase and that more reliable sources of energy such as coal and natural receive preferential treatment. But solar and wind have been around for decades and receive subsidies of over $23/Mwh compared with the $0.44/Mwh for conventional coal and $0.25/Mwh for natural gas. The Energy Information Administration crunched these numbers before the passage of the stimulus bill that allocated billions more for clean energy production. At any rate, we believe we should peel back the subsidies for all energy sources (including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear) so the government does not give preferential treatment to any one over another.

So, in other words, without the backing of government subsidy — that is, without the underwriting of your tax dollars where the federal government, and not the 300 million American consumers, get to pick what’s a good product and what isn’t a good product — renewable energy doesn’t stand a chance.

But with that backing, does it stand a chance? Well, let’s look to a country that already uses it for just a small portion of their electricity:

Wow, when you’re a former media-darling Democratic president and the Associated Press starts to turn on you, you must have bad ratings. Here’s how the AP describes Barack Obama’s panel to investigate the Gulf oil leak:

Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background — but it’s in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.

The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.

The White House said the commission will focus on the government’s “too cozy” relationship with the oil industry. A presidential spokesman said panel members will “consult the best minds and subject matter experts” as they do their work.

The commission has yet to meet, yet some panel members had made their views known.

Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.” And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic.

“Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20.

Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling.

Co-chairman Bob Graham, a Democrat who was Florida governor and later a senator, led efforts to prevent drilling off his state’s coast. Commissioner Donald Boesch of the University of Maryland wrote in a Washington Post blog that the federal government had planned to allow oil drilling off the Virginia coast and “that probably will and should be delayed.”

Boesch, who has made scientific assessments of oil spills’ effects on the ecosystem, said usually oil spills are small. But he added, “The impacts of the oil and gas extraction industry (both coastal and offshore) on Gulf Coast wetlands represent an environmental catastrophe of massive and underappreciated proportions.”

An expert not on the commission, Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University and an Obama campaign contributor, said the panel should have included more technical expertise and “folks who aren’t sort of already staked out” on oil issues.

Ironically, the risk that another oil leak similar to the Deepwater Horizon has increased due to the Obama administration’s moratorium on deep-well drilling. Engineer Ken Arnold explains why to the WSJ:

A big reason why those experts would have balked is because they recognize that the moratorium is indeed a threat to safety. Mr. Arnold offers at least four reasons why.

The ban requires oil companies to abandon uncompleted wells. The process of discontinuing a well, and then later re-entering it, introduces unnecessary risk. He notes BP was in the process of abandoning its well when the blowout happened.

The ban is going to push drilling rigs to take jobs in other countries. “The ones that go first will be the newest, biggest, safest rigs, because they are most in demand. The ones that go last and come back first are the ones that aren’t as modern,” says Mr. Arnold.

The indeterminate nature of this ban will encourage experienced crew members to seek other lines of work—perhaps permanently. Restarting after a ban will bring with it a “greater mix of new people who will need to be trained.” The BP event is already pointing, in part, to human error, and the risk of that will increase with a less experienced crew base. Finally, a ban will result in more oil being imported on tankers, which are “more likely” to spill oil than local production.

All this is even before raising ban’s economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf’s biggest industry to its grave.

There are lies, there are damned lies, and there’s Barack Obama. His presidential address to the nation regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon oil leak was filled with some big fibs.

Starting with:

“But make no mistake:  We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. .. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.”

If the Obama administration is doing “whatever’s necessary,” then why has he not granted a waiver for the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, “a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers”? The federal head of the cleanup effort, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, has previously stated that there hasn’t been a need for this? Really? Tell that to the people of the Gulf coast. As Fox’s Brian Wilson explains, “But that [the foreign assistance currently used] is largely technology transferred to US vessels. Some of the best clean up ships – owned by Belgian, Dutch and the Norwegian firms are NOT being used.”

Even the typical cheerleader for liberal Democrats, Time Magazine, agreed that the refusal for help was bizarre. Also hurting Obama is that President George W. Bush waived the Jones Act during Katrina response, which perhaps explains why a recent poll of Louisianians found that Bush had higher ratings than Obama, including among 31% of Democrats polled.

It gets worse — the Dutch, for example, made a pair of offers of assistance. First to build the very sand berms along the Gulf coast like those Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindel requested from Obama. And second, sophisticated ships designed to filter oil from water via huge vacuum arms. Both offers were initially rejected. It’s, of course too late for the berms. The oil has arrived. But now, more than 50 days after the accident, the Obama administration has accepted the Dutch equipment, which works by sucking in oily water and pumping it back into the ocean after filtering.

What was the holdup? Apparently the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.” Greg Yardale comments, “Get it? The EPA wouldn’t let them suck lots of oil out of the ocean because they would be returning small amounts of oil into the ocean.” Wow, and these bureaucratic types want to run your health care too!

And they said Bush was incompetent? Here are some numbers as to what the Dutch could have done on day 3 of the leak: “One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. That is much greater than the high end estimate of the leak. The skimmers work best in calm water, which is the usual condition this time of year in the gulf.”

That’s just the first lie. Here’s the next:

Obama: “After all, oil is a finite resource.”

It is? Can he offer some proof? The truth is not only can no scientist prove that oil is finite, but scientists aren’t even sure regarding the source of oil. Decades ago some scientists theorized it came from billions of years of dead things, thus “fossil fuels.” But that’s been largely disproved, particularly through a NASA discovery that found a moon of Saturn, Titan, made up of LPG, or liquefied petroleum gas. Gee, were there dinosaurs on Titan too? Hardly, say the discoverers. Titan, after all, averages temperatures of negative 180-degrees Centigrade.

“We have determined that Titan’s methane is not of biological origin, so it must be replenished by geologic processes on Titan,” Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center told the NYT in 2005. If it’s geologic on Titan, it could be geologic on Earth as well. And if it’s geologic, that means oil could be perpetually produced for as long as the Earth’s core stays molten. (And even if it did come from dead things, are we to believe we used up 4+ billion years of dead things in just a century or so?)

No, rather the Peak Oil theory is based on the same scare-tactic politicization of science, central economic planning, and artificial scarcities as the  population disaster of Thomas Malthus, or the current Climate Change fearmongering.

Back to the Fibber in Chief:

Obama: “We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.  And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean — because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water. “

This might be the most brazen of his lies, because the above statements are only true due to the direct interference by government and environmental extremists. The truth is we have no idea what our proven oil reserves are because the government and environmentalists forbid our energy companies the ability to explore and drill to the extent the market demands! The only reason these companies are attempting to drill 5,000 feet deep is because the government and environmentalists deny them the ability to drill in shallower water or on land. One word: ANWR!

More Obama: “For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.  And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.  Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

Here’s where the Crony Corporate machine — the strange bedfellows of government and corporation — effectively lie to even liberals: Those who drool at the mouth to get off oil and coal in order to stick it to the petroleum companies don’t realize that those same companies are poised to make grand profits off of Cap-and-Trade and similar schemes designed to punish carbon output and push “renewable” energy.

Indeed, BP’s head, Lord Tony Hayward, wsa critical in formulating the Cap-and-Trade system. BP Chairman Lamar McKay supports it. As does Shell President Marvin Odum, and ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva (very Seinfeld, btw). As did former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, whose subordinates “buried a an Enron-funded study that dismissed the notion that calamity could come of global warming!” [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

But why?

Because, as Michael Morris, the CEO of the largest national coal-burning utility, American Electric Power, told Forbes Magazine (without shame), the way the carbon trading schemes are organized the company gets to pass the entire cost of the regulation on to the consumers, padded for additional profit through “administrative” fees. The more it costs them the more they make. And the more you pay. [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

Added Exelon’s John Rowe, “Exelon would gain simply because a price on carbon would raise the cost of production for fossil-fuel-powered electricity. Most of that would be passed on to customers, raising the wholesale price of power. Exelon’s revenues would rise, but its costs wouldn’t.” [Power Grab, by Chris Horner]

Despicable, eh? All enabled by your president. It’s to be expected. The insurance companies helped craft his health care legislation, just as the “Trusts” of yesteryear co-authored legislation with Teddy Roosevelt regarding trust-busting and industrial regulation. They do this because the large companies can handle the costs while the nimble smaller companies must pack it in. You see, the one thing large corporations fear more than government is free-market competition. In this way, the federal government picks the winners and losers. By the way, the American consumer is always the loser.

Let’s wrap it up.

Obama:  “Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.”

Ah, the Democrats are always such Chinaphiles, aren’t they? Actually, this is just a half-truth by Obama. The full truth is that we import most of our oil from Mexico and Canada. In other words, our neighbors are happy to drill and sell us oil in territories where we could be doing the same. The full truth is that China is importing massive quantities of oil from countries like Iraq. Chinese companies (i.e., state-owned) are also attempting to purchase European-owned oil facilities operating in the Gulf of Mexico. China intends to drill in the Gulf even if we don’t.

This begs the question: If it’s good enough for one billion Chinese…

Here’s Jonah Goldberg:

A rolling “dead zone” off the Gulf of Mexico is killing sea life and destroying livelihoods. Recent estimates put the blob at nearly the size of New Jersey.

Alas, I’m not talking about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As terrible as that catastrophe is, such accidents have occurred in U.S. waters only about once every 40 years (and globally about once every 20 years). I’m talking about the dead zone largely caused by fertilizer runoff from American farms along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya river basins. Such pollutants cause huge algae plumes that result in oxygen starvation in the Gulf’s richest waters, near the delta.

Because the dead zone is an annual occurrence, there’s no media feeding frenzy over it, even though the average annual size of these hypoxic zones has been about 6,600 square miles over the last five years, and they are driven by bipartisan federal agriculture, trade, and energy policies.

Indeed, as Steven Hayward notes in the current Weekly Standard, if policymakers continue to pursue biofuels in response to the current anti-fossil-fuel craze, these dead zones will get a lot bigger every year. A 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences found that adhering to corn-based ethanol targets will increase the size of the dead zone by as much as 34 percent.

Of course, that’s just one of the headaches “independence” from oil and coal would bring. If we stop drilling offshore, we could lose up to $1 trillion in economic benefits, according to economist Peter Passell. And, absent the utopian dream of oil-free living, every barrel we don’t produce at home, we buy overseas. That sends dollars to bad regimes (though more to Canada and Mexico). It may also increase the chances of disaster, because tanker accidents are more common than rig accidents.

But wait a minute — isn’t that precisely why we’re investing in “renewables,” to free ourselves from this vicious petro-cycle? Don’t the Billy Sundays of the Church of Green promise that they are the path to salvation?

This is infuriating and dangerous nonsense, as Matt Ridley demonstrates in his mesmerizing new book, The Rational Optimist. Let’s start with biofuels. Ethanol production steals precious land to produce inefficient fuel inefficiently (making food more scarce and expensive for the poor). If all of our transport fuel came from biofuel, we would need 30 percent more land than all of the existing food-growing farmland we have today.

In Brazil and Malaysia, biofuels are more economically viable (thanks in part to really cheap labor), but at the insane price of losing rainforest while failing to reduce the CO2 emissions that allegedly justify ethanol in the first place. According to Ridley, the Nature Conservancy’s Joseph Fargione estimates rainforest clear-cutting for biofuels releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than it offsets by displacing petroleum or coal.

As for wind and solar, even if such technologies were wildly more successful than they have been, so what? You could quintuple and then quintuple again the output of wind and solar and it wouldn’t reduce our dependence on oil. Why? Because we use oil for transportation, not for electricity. We would offset coal, but again at an enormous price. If we tried to meet the average amount of energy typically used in America, we would need wind farms the size of Kazakhstan or solar panels the size of Spain.

If you remove the argument over climate change from the equation (as even European governments are starting to do), one thing becomes incandescently clear: Fossil fuels have been one of the great boons both to humanity and the environment, allowing forests to regrow (now that we don’t use wood for heating fuel or grow fuel for horses anymore) and liberating billions from backbreaking toil. The great and permanent shortage is usable surface land and fresh water. The more land we use to produce energy, the less we have for vulnerable species, watersheds, agriculture, recreation, etc.

“If you like wilderness, as I do,” Ridley writes, “the last thing you want is to go back to the medieval habit of using the landscape surrounding us to make power.”

When I first read this I thought it was a headline from the satirical The Onion: “Director James Cameron says BP turned down help offer.”

You mean the world’s third-largest energy corporation (and forth-largest company) declined an offer of help from a Hollywood director who happens to know some people who are good at using submersibles deep under water? The nerve!

(Aside: I heard that NASA declined an offer of assistance from Armageddon and Transformers director Michael Bay even though he has vast experience in both robotics and landing on comets.)

I suppose some could say that at this rate BP shouldn’t be declining offers of assistance from anyone, but BP’s thanks-but-no-thanks underscores a likely vast difference between using submersibles to explore deep sea wrecks versus clogging a gushing oil leak 5,000 feet under water.

It also underscores the irony that BP and other oil companies are legislatively and through lawsuits forced to drill so deep precisely because of the knee-jerk extremist environmentalist leanings of Hollywood limousine liberals like James Cameron. And this, even though, or to be more exact, likely because there are ample petroleum supplies in shallower water or on land.

First they forced them to drill there, then they called them criminals for doing so.

P.S. =============

Finally, this ridiculous storyline got me thinking what other movie directors or professions could help BP. And that in turn reminded me of a favorite scene of a favorite movie, The Right Stuff.

Here’s that clip. Fast forward to about the 4-minute mark where government researchers, one played by a young Jeff Goldblum, have compiled some film of professions that might make good astronauts for President Eisenhower.

Best line: “…And they already have their own helmets!”

Second best line: “…Also, he is available as of the 15th.”