Per Clint Bolick of the Goldwater Institute (GI):

It’s not every day that the New York Times makes a compelling case against government giveaways. But a recent page-one article underscored that the Solyndra scandal was only the tip of the solar-subsidy iceberg. Huge companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, General Electric, utilities including Exelon and NRG, and even Google are receiving government guarantees that ensure large profits with virtually no risk — except to the taxpayer.

Bolick cites a November 2011 NYT article, “A Gold Rush of Subsidies”, describing various federal, state, and local incentives and suggesting that caution is in order when handing out subsidies to wealthy companies where profit is all but insured and private risk is minimized. Fair enough, but Bolick sees a “compelling case” to eliminate all government incentives for solar where no such case was made in the article. Bolick ignores the pro-subsidy argument that writers Eric Lipton and Cifford Krauss included in their piece:

Industry executives and other supporters of the subsidies say that the public money was vital to the projects, in part because financing for renewable energy projects dried up during the recession. They also note that more traditional energy sectors, like oil and natural gas, get heavy subsidies of their own. For example, in the 2010 fiscal year, the oil and gas producers got federal tax breaks of $2.7 billion, according to an analysis by the Energy Information Administration.

“These programs just level the playing field for what oil and gas and nuclear industries have enjoyed for the last 50 years,” said Rhone Resch, president of Solar Energy Industries Association. “Do you have to provide more policy support and funding initially? Absolutely. But the result is more energy security, clean energy and domestic jobs.”

Michael E. Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas, Austin, said renewable energy subsidies were a worthy investment. “It is a form of corporate welfare that is consistent with other social goals like job creation, clean air and boosting a domestic source of energy,” he said.

Fossil fuels got more than three times as much in subsidies as renewable energy got from 2002 to 2008. But the Goldwater Institute has never decried “giveaways” to Big Carbon. That might have to do with their donors and affiliations. If the Koch Brothers et al got big into solar or wind I expect GI would suddenly grow very silent on subsidies to those industries. (CORRECTION: Clint Bolick responded to this post and linked to a Republic op-ed where he did, in fact, call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies. Fair enough, Clint, but the ratio of GI statements opposing renewable subsidies to those opposing fossil fuel subsidies is very high.)

Not to mention that investments in clean energy are highly popular, whereas fossil fuel subsidies are definitely not. That’s an important consideration since energy consumers have far less leverage in that market than they do in consumer goods, such as shoes or computers. Unless you are very wealthy, you can’t just say, “I would prefer solar energy for my house, as opposed to coal or nuclear.” The only way most people can make their energy preferences known is through support for government investment. And they’ve spoken. They want the government to invest in renewable energy.

GI claims to oppose any favorable treatment to any industry via the tax code. It is true that they have gone after public pork for sports stadiums and the like, often at odds with Republican politicians and business leaders who are their usual allies. One of their favorite talking points is “government shouldn’t pick winners and losers”. Which sounds impressive except GI is wildly inconsistent about it. Hence their support for school vouchers and tuition tax credits, to the extent that they have joined lawsuits in favor of them. Those make winners out of private schools and parents sending their children to private schools using public dollars.

Which is interesting, because I’m not familiar with any poll showing widespread public support for diverting public education funds to private schools. A recent poll in Pennsylvania shows the opposite. Maybe GI could commission a poll in Arizona showing something different. I doubt they’ll succeed in that. Otherwise, I guess this all means the Goldwater Institute is consistent on one thing: They don’t care about what the people want. They care about what their donors want.

Feelin’ too lazy to update the blog with a proper post but I did want to alert y’all to this report about ALEC and AZ’s renewable energy standard on CleanTechnica by blogger Susan Kraemer.

Tuesday morning could be key in deciding Arizona solar policy for years to come. Because of the way public utilities oversight was set up in the 19th century, the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) has wound up with almost unfettered control of energy policy in the state.
On the agenda: rolling back renewable energy standards, gutting solar rebates, and even forbidding ACC from discussing declining rebates, thanks to infiltration by ALEC, the sinister nationwide shadow group which has just gained effective control over the ACC, via new member Brenda Burns, a former National Chairman of ALEC.

Definitely read the whole thing because Kraemer quotes Arizona Corporation Commission energy policy adviser Nancy LaPlaca (who is frigging brilliant) extensively about how much money ratepayers (that’s you and me) spend on fossil fuels and the hostility of the carbon based fuel industry toward solar in the sunniest state in the union. I did a search once on the phrase “government shouldn’t pick winners and losers” and a startlingly high percentage of the hits were to Big Carbon propaganda sites. They’ve been the real winners, government subsidy-wise, and they don’t want anything going to solar despite its enormous promise and popularity here in Arizona. They’ve got their obedient ALEC stooges on the Corp Comm to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Just look at their task force structure. They break down their issue areas into task forces.

Every issue task force (ie Tax and Fiscal Policy, Health and Human Services, etc.) is made up of two equal parts. Half is the public sector part (state legislators), and half is the private sector part (corporations). In order for model legislation to move forward, each task force must garner a majority of votes from each HALF. For example, if the legislator half likes an idea, but the corporate half doesn’t, the bill does NOT move forward. I saw that happen today.

That’s a lot of power for the corporate sponsorship of an organization. Maybe too much, many would say.

But that is ALEC. Fully funded by, sponsored by, and driven by its much wealthier corporate interests.

Damn straight it’s too much power. It’s profoundly undemocratic. Arizona lawmakers who went to this conference and voted with corporations to approve potential state laws need to explain themselves.

Contrast that with ALEC-backed legislation being pushed in Iowa, Florida, and Minnesota:

Iowa, Florida and Minnesota are all considering bills that specifically target anyone who documents the mistreatment of animals. In Minnesota, for instance, the bill criminalizes the recording, or mere possession, of an “image or sound” of animal suffering in a sweeping list of “animal facilities” and “crop facilities.”

Behind the scenes, the supporters of these bills have financial interests in seeing them become law. The Iowa Poultry Association helped draft the Iowa bill, and Iowa State Representative Annette Sweeney, one of its proponents, is the former executive director of the Iowa Angus Association. Simpson Farms, Florida’s second biggest egg producer, helped draft the bill in that state. And Minnesota’s bill is co-sponsored by Representative Rod Hamilton — past president and current member of the Minnesota Pork Producers.

Whether these special interests like it or not, distributing video and audio footage of factory farms, animal experimentation labs, and other facilities is protected by the First Amendment. If any investigators have trespassed or destroyed property, there are already laws on the books to charge them. To the proponents of these bills, though, these videos are not free speech, nor are they petty crime. As Florida state senator Jim Norman has said of undercover investigators: “It’s almost like terrorism.”

These Big Ag business interests want to make filming the operations on farms a felony punishable by several years in jail. And they appear to have the support of many Republican legislators in that endeavor along with model legislation support from ALEC. If you don’t think cruelty to animals is a big deal, realize that some investigators will undoubtedly capture unsanitary conditions that threaten human health and unscrupulous labor practices toward workers (many of whom are undocumented) as well. There are a lot of reasons factory farm and meat processing plant owners don’t want you to know what’s going on in them. Unlike Planned Parenthood, which takes great pains to follow the rules, the farms and plants have a massive and well-funded corporate legislative machine (ALEC) behind them to make it so they can break the rules in secrecy and with impunity.

In my view, nuclear power represents an unjustified faith in the power of human societies to control extremely complex technologies over the very long term. Any activity requiring a great deal of complex and cooperative control will do badly in difficult economic times.

Also, no human society has ever lasted for as long as nuclear waste must be looked after. It needs to be held in pools on site for perhaps a hundred years in order to cool down enough for permanent disposal, assuming a form of permanent disposal could be conceived of, approved and developed. During this period, the knowledge as to how this must be done will need to be maintained, and this may be more difficult than is currently supposed.

We need to evaluate the potential for a nuclear future in light of the disaster in Japan. This was not unpredictable, and should have been accounted for in any realistic assessment of nuclear potential. It cannot realistically be described as a black swan event.

Japan has few energy alternatives, as it lacks indigenous energy reserves and must import 80% of its energy requirements. It was therefore prepared to make Faustian bargains despite what should have been obvious risks. The impact of the loss of so much capacity, much of it probably permanently, on available electric power following the accident is very likely to impede Japan’s ability to recover from this disaster, potentially strengthening the parallels with America’s Hurricane Katrina.

We need to assess the risks inherent in using nuclear power in other locations, whether or not the risk they face is seismic (see Metsamor in Armenia, for instance, or Diablo Canyon in California). There are risks in many areas, most of which are grounded in human behaviour, either at the design stage or the operational phase. Human behaviour can easily turn what should be a one in one hundred thousand reactor-year event in to something all too likely within a human lifespan. Nuclear power may allow us to cushion the coming decline in fossil fuel availability, but only at a potentially very high price.

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen:

Nuff said.

MWE is the Morenci Water & Electric Company and REST is the Renewable Energy Standard Tariff. The REST goes toward funding to get Arizona to the goal of 15% renewable energy by 2025. Commissioner Paul Newman is asking for an increase to $4 million from $300K. Considering MWE should be paying $26 million they’d be getting off easy. I’m told the hard bargaining Corp Comm staff only requested $179K from them.

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom’s crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.

The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.

However, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and told the US diplomat that Aramco’s 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.

According to the cables, which date between 2007-09, Husseini said Saudi Arabia might reach an output of 12m barrels a day in 10 years but before then – possibly as early as 2012 – global oil production would have hit its highest point. This crunch point is known as “peak oil”.

Update on the Corp Comm hearing is that nothing was decided and they will re-adjourn Friday morning at 9:am. If you’re so inclined please contact the staffs of the following Commissioners and let them know that reopening APS’s 2011 Renewable Energy Plan is unnecessary and disruptive to business.

John LeSueur
Advisor to Chairman Gary Pierce
602-542-4145
jlesueur@azcc.gov

Antonio Gill
Executive Aide to Chairman Gary Pierce
602-542-3933
agill@azcc.gov

***********************************

Amanda Ho
Advisor to Commissioner Bob Stump
602-542-0837
ahho@azcc.gov

Trisha Morgan
Executive Aide to Commissioner Bob Stump
602-542-3935
tmorgan@azcc.gov

*************************************

Tracy Hart
Advisor to Commissioner Brenda Burns
602-542-0745
thart@azcc.gov

Thomas Galvin
Advisor to Commissioner Brenda Burns
602-542-3622
tgalvin@azcc.gov

APS is not pleased.

APS strongly opposes reopening Decision No. 72022 for the purposes articulated at the January 4, 2011 Staff Open Meeting. As APS understands it, the Commission’s
proposed modifications are not in response to any change of conditions that has arisen since the final decision in this matter was entered or in consideration of any other new
circumstance not contemplated when the Commission finally approved APS’s 201 1 RES Implementation Plan. Rather, the Commission seeks to reopen a final decision solely to
effectuate a contemplated post-election change in Commission policy.

Your Arizona Republican state leadership at work.

In a well known Greek myth, the very rich King Midas, who loves gold above all else, is granted his singular wish that everything he touches turn into gold. The gift becomes a curse when his golden touch kills plants, food, and even his daughter, who is turned into a statue. Bereft and repentant, forsaking greed, the king begs for deliverance. His curse is lifted by a wash in the river. All he holds truly precious is restored.

The modern version of the story is about a gold rush called globalization, a monetized world order that commodifies everything and poisons all that it touches: air, water, soil, whales, indigenous cultures, mothers’ milk, and babies, now born with a body burden of toxic chemicals. Money, as symbolic reward for goods and services, when elevated above all else, becomes a curse. The symbol turns tyrant and casts a plague on the living. We’re currently in the atonement chapter of the tragedy, praying we have time to write a happier ending.

But despite the best efforts of climate scientists and environmentalists to explain the dangers of climate inaction, political response is slow, most people don’t get the seriousness of the issue. CO2 emissions aren’t falling, they’re rising.

As y’all know I’m a childless curmudgeon. Far as I’m concerned what happens to this Earth after I’m worm food is literally of no personal consequence to me. I’m not leaving any progeny of mine behind to deal with it. I will die with a clean conscience on that score. The same cannot be said for climate change denialists who are also parents.