I know that when I was much younger there was talk about putting the Polar Bear on the Endangered Species List as a Threatened Species. I also remember that by the time I graduated High School that the population decline has reversed itself and that the Polar Bear population was beginning to thrive. 

I remember that this was part of the environmentalists plan to stop Prudhoe Bay and the Alaskan Pipeline, but the facts have shown that all wildlife has been thriving in the Alaskan Tundra. 

Last night I heard that the Bush Administration has now placed the Polar Bear on the Endangered Species List as a Threatened Species. I immediately thought to myself “when did this thriving population start declining?” and my second thought was “are the environmentalists and global warming crowd up to their old tricks?”, which seems very likely.

Today I came across this Press Release from the Heritage Foundation:

www.heritage.org

Heritage Foundation Condemns Bush Administration's Polar Bear Decision

WASHINGTON, May 14, 2008—Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner today issued the following statement on the Interior Department's decision to place polar bears on the endangered species list:

"Once Americans learn that a species is in danger, we pull out all the stops to protect it. Consider our national symbol, the bald eagle. It was once on the verge of extinction, but conservation has helped these magnificent birds make a strong comeback."

"Polar bears, however, are a different story. There are an estimated 20,000-25,000 wild polar bears today, up from an estimated 8,000-10,000 in the late 1960s. By any measure this species is thriving. It certainly doesn't need further protection from the United States government."

"Today's decision seems aimed at endangering another endeavor: New oil and natural gas production in Alaska and in its surrounding waters. By placing the polar bear on the endangered species list, the Bush Administration has made it extremely difficult – perhaps impossible - to open up even a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), an area estimated to contain 10 billion barrels of oil, no matter what administrative window dressings were put in place. That's enough to replace what we'll import from Saudi Arabia over the next 15 years."

"Unfortunately, new energy exploration isn't the only activity that's at risk now that the polar bear is listed as endangered. Environmentalists want to use fears about global warming (supposedly caused by humans, although the globe hasn't warmed in almost 10 years) to limit our country's energy use, and that can apply in any of the 50 states – from Alaska to Florida. They will now attempt to do so under the guise of protecting the polar bear."

"The listing of the polar bear as threatened is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to limit our country's energy exploration and use. The Bush administration should immediately reconsider and overturn today's decision."

©2008 The Heritage Foundation

All Rights Reserved.

214 Massachusetts Ave NE

Washington, DC 20002-4999

phone - 202.546.4400 | fax - 202.546.8328

e-mail - staff@heritage.org

It Appears that I am not the ONLY one thinking this!

The link below is from Ben Lieberman discussing the Energy Bill on the John Grambling Show on WABC Radio in New York City.

Ben discusses what has, or hasn’t happened with the differing versions of the Energy Bill that was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

After listening you need to ask yourself if this version is something we really need.

Ben Lieberman on WABC radio

I have a lot more information on this energy bill and not very much of it is good. In fact I think this bill will be detrimental to the economy, the environment, and most importantly to our ability to save our money.

I have often said that we should open up importation of ethanol to meet our needs but now I am thinking this is only a short term solution.

It is ironic that we have presidential contenders that cry foul to the subsidies to oil companies and yet they willingly give subsidies to corn farmers, ethanol producers and ethanol distributors to the tune of 51 cents per gallon. Subsidies to something that is worse for the country and environment than gasoline. Go figure.

In fact the video below is Ben Lieberman talking about some of the other half-truths that came out of the Pennsylvania campaign and debate last week. These are the important things to remember come November.

After my last post I found a rebuttal letter to the editor in the Laconia Daily Sun and felt that I had to write a letter too. Below is my letter in its entirety. More posts will follow (some of which will repeat what I have written to the Editors of the Laconia Daily Sun, where the original letters appeared, and the Citizen of Laconia. If you were listening to "Meet the New Press" this Saturday you heard some discussion on this topic and heard it mentioned that I would be adding more posts on this subject on this blog.

To the Editor,

I have been doing some studying on the current situation concerning the high energy prices that we find ourselves in today. I started doing this research so I could present accurate facts on my blog site, The Blogging Councilor (www.laconia-nh.us) and when I saw the letter from Sean Holgate in the April 23^rd edition of the Laconia Daily Sun I figured it was time to finish my research and start posting the information.

Then I saw the rebuttal letter from Tim Sullivan in the April 24^th edition of the Laconia Daily Sun. I would like to provide some of the information I have found in a rebuttal to this letter.

Mr. Holgate states “When will it be enough? When will someone stand up and say no more? We need to pass laws to prevent price gouging on a daily basis. We need to open the federal oil reserves and lower the price of fuel so Americans don’t have to figure out how to put food on the tables and heating oil in the tank.” The answer to this is that the time to start taking action was a long time ago, but it’s not too late to start. I assume the federal oil reserves he is talking about is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) that was set up after the 1973 – 74 Arab Oil Embargo. The SPR was set up for emergency situations that affect the supply of oil; such as another embargo, a serious outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East or an attack on the Saudi oil fields and shipping lanes that prevent the oil from getting to the U.S. and our refineries.

It is said that the SPR has had a positive effect on oil rich anti-American countries not wanting to seriously affect the world wide oil supply because we can “wait them out” and they would have to resume oil supply before going bankrupt.

The SPR contains 700 million barrels of oil and has never been used for its intended purpose, but has been tapped for problems with domestic supply in situations like Hurricane Katrina. The world wide demand for oil is 86 million barrels of oil per day and the American demand makes up 21 million barrels of that number. Given the fact that the SPR can provide 3 – 4 million barrels per day it can only be used to affect pricing for 5 – 6 months. At that time the price would jump back to current levels and the reserve would be depleted.

Mr. Holgate also asks “What can we do? Maybe park the cars for a day. Maybe protest in Washington DC and let the president hear the people of the United States of America!” This again would be fruitless because we are eventually going to have to drive and fill our cars.

Mr. Sullivan appears to have some valid research of his own on the current economic woes that have accelerated this problem, but his main thesis is the “blame Bush” mentality that does no good in this discussion. I would say to Mr. Sullivan that this problem started many decades ago and the blame belongs on both sides of the aisle. We are where we are because of the decisions our elected representatives in both the U.S. Legislature and the Presidency has made over the past 30 years.

I hope Mr. Sullivan doesn’t think that all Republicans are Conservatives, but with the tone of his remarks it appears he does. I consider myself a Conservative and it doesn’t matter to me WHICH SIDE OF THE AISLE a solution to a problem comes from, only that it is a good solution that doesn’t cause more problems than it solves. I agree that the Republicans have gone crazy with spending, but that is not the Conservative way. On a problem of this nature partisanship is a hindrance to an effective solution.

In the 70’s, over the objections of several environmental groups Congress decided to allow the drilling of oil in Prudhoe Bay in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). There were objections that the Caribou population would suffer and they were already on the threatened species list. The objections have been proved to be wrong as all of the wildlife has thrived and the populations have grown dramatically. At least Congress got this one right.

In the late 70’s President Carter made a choice to pursue research in nuclear power and to turn our back on research for wind, hydroelectric, ocean current and solar technologies. This plan was approved by Congress.

Then we had the problems with nuclear power (Three Mile Island and later Chernobyl) which made Congress decide to stop pursuing this strategy. Regulations were put in place that made it virtually impossible for nuclear power plants to come on-line. Because Congress has turned their back on this power source we have never, as a nation, decided what to do with the nuclear waste that comes from this type of energy production.

Wind power is currently being expanded, but we have elected officials not allowing it in certain areas because they don’t like it. Here locally we have PSNH paying owners of hydroelectric power plants to remove them and not produce electricity because they don’t like the competition. Where is the outrage about this.

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s (and even into this decade) Congress defeated efforts to expand drilling in ANWR. In 1995 President Clinton vetoed a bill to allow drilling in another 2,000 acres at ANWR. This is a small percentage of the 19 million acres that make up ANWR. In fact 2,000 acres equals less than 1% of New Hampshire, and NH equals less than 1% of ANWR. President Clinton cited environmental concerns but the technology has evolved to a point that there would be less impact than the current site in Prudhoe Bay.

If this work had been started in 1995 we would be producing more than 1 million barrels of oil domestically right now. ANWR isn’t the only area of oil that is off limits by federal regulations. The Department of Interior has estimated that we have over 20 billion barrels of oil onshore and another 20 billion barrels of oil off shore. In fact we are the only country in the world that has oil reserves that are “off limits” to drilling and production.

There is a lot of talk about alternative energy sources such as ethanol. Mr. Holgate mentions in his letter “Now remember everything else will double in price — food, heating oil, utilities, etc.” I am sure everyone has noticed the increase at the supermarket for food. This is because the current energy policy passed by Congress in 2005 and signed into law by President Bush mandates ethanol production and ethanol blends of fuel. Currently we are committed to 9 billion barrels of ethanol and this is to increase to 36 billion barrels by 2022.

The current supply of ethanol comes from corn and has caused the price of corn to go from a stable $2 per bushel to over $5 per bushel and the increased planting of corn to meet the mandate has reduced the acreage available for wheat and soybean harvests. This increases the price for these products too, not to mention the price increase of feeding livestock for meat production. Last year, in order to protect a further dependency Congress strengthened the restrictions on importing ethanol from countries like Brazil.

There are other problems with ethanol use. First of all every gallon of ethanol is subsidized by our tax dollars in the amount of $0.51 per gallon. Secondly cars using ethanol get fewer miles per gallon and the greenhouse gasses that are supposed to be reduced are actually being increased. According to two articles in the February 29, 2008 issue of Science (vol. 319) “Joseph Fagione et al titled Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt and Timothy Searchinger et al titled Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gasses Through Emissions from Land-Use Change” carbon dioxide is being released by 17 to 420 times more than the fuels they are supposed to replace. There are many more issues and problems with ethanol use and I won’t go into them now.

Suffice it to say that alternative energy sources will take time to become effective. Sources like Hydrogen Fuel Cells are working now but still need to be researched to make them commercially available.

The 2007 energy bill is being held up by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. They have differing versions of the same bill and refuse to go into conference to work out the differences until after the November elections. WHY???

What we can do now is to pressure our federally elected representatives to work out a compromise on the energy bill and to make sure it has BOTH short term and long term solutions. In the short term we need to open up drilling in ANWR and off shore in the Gulf of Mexico, where China, Great Britain, India, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Venezuela are currently drilling. In the long term we need to provide incentives for research for profitable sources of energy and remove subsidies for alternative sources that cause more harm than good.

I will be posting my sources for this research online and I encourage everyone to take a close look at the postings and provide their input. If we can collectively create a loud enough voice they will hear us in Washington.

Greg Knytych

Laconia

This is such a complex subject and I will try to make future posts shorter and confined to one aspect.