WSJ: "In Exxon War, Bamboozled by Greenies" & "The Tombstone Pipeline"

In Exxon War, Bamboozled by Greenies

Journalists discover (and misrepresent) what the oil giant has been trying to tell them for years.

By HOLMAN JENKINS, JR.

Nov. 6, 2015 6:28 p.m. ET        THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

15 COMMENTS

ENLARGE

The Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas.PHOTO: JESSICA RINALDI/REUTERS

Scurry on board the Exxon prosecution express. Lest they be left behind and called “deniers,” Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley,the attorney general of New York and Al Gorethis week all demanded criminal investigation of Exxon Mobil as a result of recent media “exposés.”

Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire on Thursday agreed, saying, “There’s a lot of evidence that they misled people.”

Not one of these worthies likely examined the evidence, which tells a story quite different from the claim that Exxon somehow concealed its understanding of the climate debate. But the hurdle rate for “investigative” journalism has apparently become low. The allegedly damning documents that the Los Angeles Times and the website Inside Climate News (ICN) claim to have unearthed were published by Exxon itself, in peer-reviewed journals, on its website, and in archives created by Exxon for public use.

Opinion Journal Video

Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr.on President Obama’s announcement to reject TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Technically, the reporters wallow in the equivocation fallacy. Uncertainty about whether X=2 is not the same as uncertainty about whether 2+2=4. Acknowledging and even studying man’s impact on the climate, as Exxon has done and continues to do, is not tantamount to endorsing a green policy agenda of highly questionable value.

And that’s the real problem. Read closely and the accusation isn’t really that Exxon misled the public by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science, which are real. It’s that Exxon refused to sign up for a vision of climate doom that would justify large and immediate costs to reduce fossil fuel use.

This fantasy is summed up in the ICN series by Penn State climatologist Michael Mann,who is quoted as saying, “All it would’ve taken is for one prominent fossil fuel CEO to know this was about more than just shareholder profits.”

But wait, hasn’t this experiment been run? In the early 2000s, BP CEO John Brownebegan sounding a climate alarm. Ron Oxburgh, the chairman of Shell, gave a speech warning of planetary doom. In 2007, Alcoa, GE, Duke Energy, Ford, DuPont and others endorsed a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. All this failed to move the ball in two successive congresses, though, because Senate Democrats (the second time joined by President Obama) didn’t want to be blamed for jacking up gasoline prices.

The same experiment has also been run globally. Out of 196 countries, 196 have concluded that there is no way, with current technology, to take a big enough whack out of carbon-dioxide emissions at a cost their societies would be prepared to bear.

Even Mr. Obama’s decision on Friday to nix the Keystone XL pipeline came at a time of low gas prices when he will never face voters again, and in full knowledge that his decision won’t impede Canada’s development of its oil sands.

The narrative of Exxon’s supposedly criminal deceit may be loopy, but save your real contempt for the climate lawyers now rubbing their hands over a Big Tobacco-style lawsuit. In effect, their cynical reasoning is that Exxon can be punished for failing to conceal its awareness of the climate debate.

But why stop at Exxon? President Obama is aware of the threat of climate change—he talks about it all the time—yet has presided over an expansion of oil and gas leasing. Vice President Al Gore endlessly harped on climate change—yet when confronted with a modest uptick in gasoline prices during his presidential run, insisted that President Clinton open the strategic reserve to keep gas prices low.

Maybe the tobacco analogy is apt after all. Recall that the result of government lawsuits wasn’t to ban tobacco use but to make government (and organized crime) the main beneficiary of tobacco revenues. The U.S. government controls 31% of America’s mineral rights, and has 42,000 drilling leases in effect covering 80 million acres. Federal lands produce 41% of America’s coal output. Elsewhere, governments control 100% of mineral rights. Wherever it operates these days, Exxon is mainly an agent for governments determined to realize oil revenues regardless of any climate fears.

But the big lie here is that any Exxon spectacle would be aimed at advancing the cause of climate policy anyway. Especially sad is the decision by Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund to sign a group letter calling for a criminal inquiry, though he mealy-mouthed his participation by saying “We don’t have all the facts. We’re not prejudging what happened.”

Mr. Krupp was last seen blaming the “shrillness that has permeated our advocacy” for the Senate defeats, and calling for a “more reasoned” and “calmer discussion” that is diametrically the opposite of the Exxon witch trial now being whipped up.

At least until this week, Mr. Krupp was an outlier, devoting himself to the coalition-building that is indispensable for real policy progress (and Exxon for the past six years has been a public supporter of a carbon tax). But Mr. Krupp’s fellow climate campaigners clearly have other priorities.

The Tombstone Pipeline

Obama kills thousands of jobs for climate-change symbolism.

Nov. 6, 2015 6:56 p.m. ET

132 COMMENTS

President Obama personally killed the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, dismissing the project as a mere “symbol” that “has occupied what I, frankly, consider an overinflated role in our political discourse.” The irony is that the pipeline’s benefits would be tangible, while the symbolism and overinflation are entirely political.

A President more invested in the real economy would have long ago welcomed Keystone’s contribution to North American energy development. But on Friday Mr. Obama emerged, seven years into both his Presidency and multiple State Department reviews of the pipeline, to declare that Keystone is not in the national interest of the United States.

This position is—to borrow his phrase—well outside the bipartisan political center. Mr. Obama would have been more honest if he’d admitted that he is bowing to the interests of the green-left fringe and the Democratic donors who oppose all forms of carbon energy.

A broad Congressional majority voted to approve Keystone this year, including nine Democrats in the Senate and 28 in the House, falling only a few votes short of a veto override. Business, consumers, labor unions and America’s No. 1 trading partner Canada also wanted to connect Alberta’s oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries, which would create thousands of jobs and strengthen energy security.

Opinon Journal Video

Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr.on President Obama’s announcement to reject TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Even as he killed Keystone, Mr. Obama urged Congress to “pass a serious infrastructure plan.” But what are pipelines if not the definition of infrastructure—and this one shovel-ready besides, at no cost to taxpayers? Even Mr. Obama conceded that Keystone is not “the express lane to climate disaster,” and the State Department determined the pipeline would reduce CO2 emissions by displacing oil transport via truck and rail. Then why reject it?

To promote his climate-change ambitions, by Mr. Obama’s own admission. Mr. Obama said in his statement Friday that the U.S. “is now a global leader” on climate change “and frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.” So he will now dump Keystone’s corpse at the Paris global-warming summit in the coming weeks and demand that other countries make their own ritual sacrifices.

Mr. Obama suggested that “other big emitters like China” will be impressed. Yet only this week the Chinese revealed that their coal use is 17% higher than previously thought. China is such a heavy carbon user that this 17% wedge alone amounts to 70% of all U.S. coal emissions. If this correction in any way revises Mr. Obama’s climate pact with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he didn’t mention it.

The larger and more dangerous symbolism is what Mr. Obama’s refusal reveals about today’s Democratic Party. Liberals used to favor a price on carbon, which would be damaging enough for economic growth. Now they believe fossil fuels must remain underground forever and favor any obstruction against their development. Hillary Clinton now embraces this same philosophy.

Maybe Keystone can be revived in the next Administration, assuming a Republican wins the Presidency and the TransCanada company hasn’t written off America as too politically risky. For now, workers and the economy will have to suffer for Mr. Obama’s green illusions.

WSJ: President veto & his oil-by-rail boom

President Veto

The Keystone veto is not a governing strategy but an act of isolation.

Feb. 24, 2015 6:51 p.m. ET

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

White House aides are whispering that President Obama ’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline authorization bill signals a new phase of his Presidency, and we suppose they’re right. He’ll finish out his tenure as a Howard Hughes-like penthouse recluse who is ever more withdrawn from the political and economic center.

The legislation to build the Keystone XL pipeline that Mr. Obama rejected Tuesday enjoys a broad bipartisan consensus, including support from nine Senate Democrats and 28 in House. Business, labor unions, most consumers, and ally and trading partner Canada are also in favor of this $8 billion infrastructure project, which will create jobs, strengthen North American energy security and increase prosperity.

Mr. Obama is refusing these benefits to bow to the environmental-left fringe that opposes all carbon energy. The reason he gave in a quiet veto message to Congress—no speech, no cameras—was that the bill “cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.” The Keystone has been in regulatory limbo for about 2,300 days in perhaps the most extensive permitting review in the history of American government.

Aside from his green billionaire friends, we suspect Mr. Obama also wanted to frustrate what happens to be an incidental Republican priority: The House is 11 votes and the Senate merely five votes short of the two-thirds majority necessary for a override.

The Washington press corps is all but filing profiles of Mr. Obama’s veto pen (a Cross Townsend roller-ball) and explaining that his wall of vetoes against anything that comes out of Congress is his “strategy” for the next two years. The better way of putting is that Mr. Obama will leave office increasingly isolated, obstructionist and partisan.

Obama’s Oil-by-Rail Boom

Activists get their jollies blocking pipeline construction, but the crude still flows through your neighborhood.

An oil-train derailment near LaSalle, Colo., May 9, 2014. 

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.  Feb. 24, 2015  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

It’s better to be lucky than good. President Obama, who arrived promising to heal the planet and halt the rising seas, instead presided over a fossil-fuel renaissance in America. If you were unemployed and found a decent job in Obama’s economy, there’s a good chance it was a fracking job. If things are finally looking up for the middle class, cheap gas is a major contributor.

He was lucky again on July 6, 2013. Thanks to various competing news stories (a plane crash in San Francisco, the Trayvon Martin shooting trial), Americans did not dwell on a fiery oil-train accident in Canada that killed 47. For if there’s one boom Mr. Obama can claim authorship of, it’s the oil-by-rail boom.

A business that barely existed when he took office now moves an impressive million barrels a day. The oil pouring forth from America’s resurgent fields, after all, has to reach market somehow. And as the Journal explained in December, political opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has “emboldened resistance to at least 10 other pipeline projects across North America. . . . The groups coordinate their moves in regular conference calls and at meetings in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.”

The publication Energy Monitor Worldwide elaborated in September: “Environmentalists and governments are making it more and more difficult to get approval to build pipelines, so producers are increasingly using rail to get their oil to refineries for processing into products that the American public needs. . . . If all the railcars carrying crude oil on a single day were hitched together to a single locomotive, that train would be about 17 miles long.”

Yes, oil can move by ship, but America’s 94-year-old Jones Act, a law cherished by Democrats and labor unions, makes it prohibitively expensive. If the goal is to move U.S.-produced oil to U.S. markets without some gimmicky side-trip through the European refining industry, that leaves rail.

All the more newsy, then, is Mr. Obama’s unsurprising veto of bipartisan legislation that would have authorized the Keystone XL pipeline. Opposing Keystone, it goes without saying, will not make the slightest difference to things opponents claim to care about. It will not alter by an infinitesimal fraction of a degree mankind’s reliance on fossil fuels or the continued development of hydrocarbon resources.

It will, however, give fresh impetus to America’s oil-by-rail boom.

Oregon, a state whose green bona fides are not in doubt, has already approved $6.9 million in public subsidies to expand rail capacity to receive Bakken crude from North Dakota and redistribute it on Columbia River barges.

Kansas City Southern is building a new Texas rail terminal capable of receiving two 120-car trains per day of Canadian heavy crude. Ten oil trains a day already trundle through downtown Philadelphia to the city’s reborn refinery industry.

The International Energy Agency forecasts that North America will invest $2.5 trillion in oil infrastructure over the next 20 years, of which Keystone would have represented just 0.3%. More of those dollars now will be spent to build oil-by-rail infrastructure, less to build pipeline infrastructure, although most experts consider pipeline a safer way to transport oil.

Not to worry, however. In all likelihood, a tragedy like the accident that wiped out the Canadian town of Lac-Mégantic 20 months ago won’t recur. Railroads have steadily gained experience to handle their explosive windfall without major disaster. But, as we are reminded every few weeks, trains will still derail, oil will spill, and messes will have to be cleaned up.

Which raises a question: What are Mr. Obama’s true policy convictions, if any?

After the midterm elections, we might have expected him to try to tempt the new Republican majority with a tax-reform deal in return for a carbon tax. Even if the effort didn’t bear immediate fruit, the way would be pointed toward a long-term bargain to restore growth while addressing climate-change fears.

We also would have expected him finally to wave through the Keystone pipeline, if only out of irritation with green allies for tormenting him over a phony symbolic issue.

Wrong on both counts. Polls show the public supports the pipeline; labor wants the jobs. But for Mr. Obama, the balancing factor is clearly the criticism he would receive from the Sierra Club, the hostile tweets that might be directed at him from millennials, and the money that a handful of green billionaires might redirect to the Clinton Foundation rather than Mr. Obama’s own post-presidential occupations.

What seems absent from his calculations are any practical considerations outside the political bubble, such as the millions of barrels of flammable liquid that will be rumbling through America’s residential neighborhoods aboard mile-long oil trains.

San Francisco Chronicle: "Global-warming true believers are in denial"

Global-warming true believers are in denial

By Debra J. Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle columnist

December 18, 2014 9:08am 

I have a theory as to why Americans don’t worry all that much about global warming: High-profile purveyors of climate change don’t push for reductions in greenhouse gases so much as focus on berating people who do not agree with their opinions. They call themselves champions of “the science” — yet focus on ideology more than tangible results.

Their language is downright evangelical. Recently, science guy Bill Nye joined other experts who objected to the media’s use of the term “climate skeptic.” They released a statement that concluded, “Please stop using the word 'skeptic’ to describe deniers.” Deniers? Like Judas?

Why, they even hear voices from science. “Science has spoken,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently proclaimed. Some men think God talks to them; others hear Science.

Back to my original point: San Francisco liberal plutocrat Tom Steyer has called climate change “the defining issue of our generation.” He told the Hill, “Really, what we’re trying to do is to make a point that people who make good decisions on this should be rewarded, and people should be aware that if they do the wrong thing, the American voters are watching and they will be punished.”

You would assume from the above statement that Steyer wants to punish businesses or people who emit a super-size share of greenhouse gases. But no, Steyer’s big push for 2014 was to spend some $73 million to defeat Republicans who support the Keystone XL pipeline. But stopping Keystone won’t reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels by one drop. It simply will make it harder to tap into Canadian tar-sands oil.

On Monday, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León said he plans on introducing a measure to require that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System sell off any coal-related investments. In recent years, demands for disinvestment have visited universities. In May, Stanford voted to forgo investments in coal mining. Student groups have been pushing for Harvard and the University of California to dump fossil-fuel assets as well. It’s a good sign that those efforts have not prevailed at either institution. It’s a bad sign that de León has found a new soft target — CalPERS.

The problem, Harvard Professor Robert N. Stavins wrote for the Wall Street Journal, is: “Symbolic actions often substitute for truly effective actions by allowing us to fool ourselves into thinking we are doing something meaningful about a problem when we are not.” Disinvestment also does nothing to reduce energy use.

Matt Dempsey of Oil Sands Fact Check sees disinvestment as the new environmental talking point for 2016 races. It requires no visible personal sacrifice — while feeding activists’ sense of self-righteousness. Its emptiness is part of the allure. De León even told reporters that he’d write a bill that in no way “hurts investment strategies.”

Then there are the conferences — Kyoto, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro. The venues for Earth summits would make for a great episode of “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” The scions of science ought to get acquainted with Skype. If the future of the planet is at stake, shouldn’t the champions of science at least look as if they’re trying to curb their emissions?

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist.

Ironic: Keystone pipeline blocked by Obama/Dems for 6 years would decrease emissions 42% vs. using rail

Mary Landrieu’s Keystone Lifeline

Harry Reid’s gambit to deny Republicans a 54th Senate seat.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) in 2011 

Nov. 13, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET   THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Elections have consequences, as President Obama said in his glory days, and barely a week later the losing Senate Democrats have already broken their line against the Keystone XL pipeline. Call it the Save Mary Landrieu Act of 2014.

The Louisiana Democrat faces a Senate runoff next month against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, and, lo, Majority Leader Harry Reid has suddenly allowed a vote on legislation she proposed with North Dakota Republican John Hoeven earlier this year that Mr. Reid blocked. The idea is to give her a show of political independence from Mr. Obama, who is about as popular in the Pelican State as BP .

You have to admire this transparent show of low political principle, especially because it clearly betrays that Mr. Reid has been the real obstacle to passing pro-growth, bipartisan legislation for the last four years. Ms. Landrieu couldn’t get Harry to move for ages, but now that Republicans will soon take charge her comrades will do anything to prevent the GOP from getting a 54th Senate seat.

The House has already voted eight times to authorize building the Keystone XL, which would open a new avenue for crude oil from Canada and the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast. The House plans to vote again on Friday to pass the latest version sponsored by Mr. Cassidy, which is roughly the same as the Senate bill.

President Obama has refused for six years to sign off on the pipeline, which his own State Department has estimated would create some 42,100 jobs and concluded would not significantly increase carbon emissions. State has completed five environmental reports confirming the null carbon hypothesis.
If Keystone isn’t built, oil producers will employ other vehicles to transport Canadian crude. Cenovus Energy plans to export 375,000 barrels a day to Canada’s east and west coasts via other pipelines. Canadian Pacific Railway estimates that it will carry 200,000 carloads of crude next year, more than double last year’s load. Valero Energy is expanding rail terminals in California, Louisiana and Quebec to handle more oil shipments.

One irony is that rail poses a greater environmental risk and so-called carbon footprint than the 1,200-mile underground pipeline. According to a State Department report this year, distributing the oil via train directly to the Gulf of Mexico would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 41.8%.
But if this debate were about the merits, Keystone XL would have been approved years ago. The pipeline is really about Democratic fealty to the party’s rich environmentalist donors, and that means the bill still has to get past Mr. Obama. “It’s fair to say that our dim view of these kinds of [legislative] proposals has not changed,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest this week. “The President’s senior advisers at the White House would recommend that he veto legislation” resembling prior House bills.

So even if Ms. Landrieu gets her vote, Democrats can whisper to billionaire donor Tom Steyer that they know Keystone won’t become law on their watch. Republicans will have to do all of this again next year, when Ms. Landrieu’s support won’t matter. Louisiana voters should act accordingly.

WSJ: Obama trades higher U.S. energy costs now for distant Chinese promises

Green Leap Forward

Obama trades higher U.S. energy costs now for distant Chinese promises

Nov. 12, 2014 7:26 p.m. ET  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The climate-change campaign against fossil fuels has been having a hard time with democracy. Voters in the U.S. support fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline, Australia repealed its carbon tax, and frustration with green energy costs is rising across Europe. So perhaps it’s not surprising that President Obama has turned to a dictatorship for help with his anticarbon ambitions.

In that sense, the emissions accord sealed Tuesday night between the U.S. and China is a perfect reflection of the mindset of Western climate-change activists. Cheap and abundant energy is popular among Americans because it raises living standards and helps the economy grow.

The romance of the fresh princelings of Beijing is that they needn’t abide such barriers to enlightened governance as elections, a free press, transparency, the rule of law and two political parties. They can simply order economic transformation in the next five-year plan, and censor any dissenters as Al Gore wants to do in the U.S. Thus in China Mr. Obama has found the ideal climate-change partner: A technocratic elite that can instruct the bourgeoisie how they must light their homes and commute to work.

We and many others have been skeptical of a U.S.-China carbon pact, though that was because we assumed the White House and green lobby would demand terms that imposed at least some discipline on Chinese behavior. We discounted the possibility that Mr. Obama preferred the illusion of progress, and that his green allies could be rolled as cheaply as the terms of Tuesday’s accord.

Under the nonbinding, no-detail agreement, Supreme Leader Xi Jinping promises “to intend to achieve the peaking of CO2 emissions around 2030,” and then maybe after that to decline. This is another way of describing the status quo.

Forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, BP ’s Statistical Review of World Energy and the academic journal Energy Policy all expect Chinese energy consumption to crest in two decades due to demographic and urbanization trends. Mr. Obama has in essence persuaded the Chinese to do what they planned to do anyway.

Mr. Xi also agreed to shift at least 20% of Chinese energy production to non-fossil-fuels by 2030. But this too is what China has already intended, albeit largely by replacing dirty coal with nuclear power. China’s Communist Party has relied on coal to fuel rapid economic growth but that is increasingly becoming a political liability as the air becomes unbreathable. Then there is widespread groundwater contamination and an eat-at-your-own-risk food supply.

This tangible damage has inspired a revolt against the corruption and eyes-wide-shut ecological denial that defines China’s political system. The harm—measured in health problems and premature deaths, not merely higher temperatures predicted decades away in climate computer models—also should remind America’s green central-planners that autocracies are the world’s worst polluters. Think of the death of the Aral Sea under the Soviets, or dead pigs floating down the Yangtze.

***

All of which suggests that this accord is less about China than American climate politics. One of the main arguments against U.S. carbon rationing has been that such economic masochism is pointless as long as Chinese and Indian emissions continue to grow. Mr. Obama will now claim the Middle Kingdom is signed onto his anticarbon agenda, even if its promises are distant and vague.

In return for Mr. Xi’s assurances, Mr. Obama pledged that the U.S. will cut emissions by as much as 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. This implies doubling the annual pace of CO2 reductions over the 17% marker that Mr. Obama set in 2009. So using the Sino-American deal as cover, Mr. Obama will now say he is obliged to impose a new burst of aggressive carbon regulations, no matter the harm to U.S. growth.

The difference is that American governance, unlike China’s, is supposed to follow the rule of law; companies can’t refuse to obey regulations because the CEO’s brother-in-law belongs to the Party. Yet most of the rule-makings to enforce Mr. Obama’s promises to China will emerge from his administrative-state tunnels like the Environmental Protection Agency without a vote in Congress. Under this President, the political systems of the East and West may share more features than patriots care to admit.

This condominium between the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbonizers is also supposed to inspire a new global climate treaty in Paris next year, but other nations may draw a different lesson about Mr. Obama’s negotiation methods. The Chinese no doubt saw how much the President wanted an agreement and that he would accept nearly anything that could pass as one.

Meaningless global warming promises are much easier than corralling weapons of mass destruction in North Korea, or convincing Beijing to fight Islamic State, or for that matter stopping Chinese cyber-attacks on U.S. military and corporate targets. Mr. Xi must have been delighted to see a U.S. President agree to make America less economically competitive in return for rhetorical bows to doing something someday about climate change.

WSJ: Little Green Machine: Democrats make a bad investment in the climate-change lobby

Little Green Machine

Democrats make a bad investment in the climate-change lobby.

Businessman Tom Steyer 

Nov. 6, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET   THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Tom Steyer became a billionaire by investing in fossil fuels, among other things, and maybe he should return to his roots. He may need the money after blowing at least $74 million trying to persuade voters to oppose Republicans who disagree with him on climate change.

If you want proof that money doesn’t buy elections, Mr. Steyer and his fellow green comrades are it. The San Francisco investor gave most of his money to his NextGen Climate Action Super Pac, which spent almost exclusively for Democrats. Environmental groups including NextGen spent $85 million to support President Obama ’s green agenda, especially his regulations targeting coal for extinction.

They didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt, and they aren’t taking it well. “Despite the climate movement’s significant investments and an unprecedented get out the vote program, strong voices for climate action were defeated and candidates paid for by corporate interests and bolstered by sinister voter suppression tactics won the day,” declared Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune.

Venting can be healthy, but self-deception isn’t. Mr. Brune should really blame the economic reality that the U.S. boom in fossil-fuel production is creating high-paying jobs and reducing energy costs across the economy. By contrast, Mr. Obama’s green agenda has created few jobs and raised costs for millions of Americans.

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips on how the Democrats outspent the Republicans in the midterms and why they have nothing to show for it. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Voters in Pacific Heights or Manhattan may not mind paying more for their self-styled political virtue, but the average Debbie in Dubuque would rather not. The mistake too many Democrats made was listening to Mr. Steyer instead of Debbie.

This year’s environmental debate boiled down to Democratic support for Mr. Obama’s climate rules and green subsidies against full-throated Republican support for energy production of all sorts, including coal, oil and natural-gas fracking, more pipelines and greater fossil-fuel exports. These GOP candidates won nearly everywhere.

In Kentucky Mitch McConnell made opposition to the “war on coal” the centerpiece of his campaign. He won what was expected to be a close election by 15 points. Coal-supporting Shelley Moore Capito became the first GOP Senator in 55 years from West Virginia, where voters also ended the 38-year career of Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall, who couldn’t separate himself from Mr. Obama’s energy policies.

Nearly every one of Mr. Steyer’s favored candidates—in Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin and Maine—lost. New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen won, but Scott Brownhad her playing defense for supporting a cap-and-trade carbon tax. A recent Gallup poll found that climate change ranked last among 16 issues that voters cared about in the midterms.

It’s even possible that Mr. Steyer’s money helped Republicans. He and the greens have made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a litmus test of their support for Democrats. Mr. Obama has in turn dutifully delayed approving the pipeline, despite multiple government reports showing no net effect on the climate. But the delay has raised Keystone’s national profile and made it a wedge issue in Senate campaigns.

Republicans campaigned for the project that polls show has 70% approval, using Keystone to appeal to union workers and voters without college degrees. Colorado’s Cory Gardner hammered Democratic Sen. Mark Udall on his refusal to support Keystone. He’s now Senator-elect Gardner.

Republicans are promising to push pro-fossil-fuel energy policy in Congress, including support for Keystone XL, fast-track approval for liquid natural-gas export terminals, opening more federal land and offshore areas to drilling, and reining in anti-coal regulations. Democrats who want to help create jobs, and perhaps save their own, may want to rethink their fealty to Tom Steyer’s checkbook.

WSJ: Spontaneous Solar Combustion. Will green activists feel cognitive dissonance for turning on renewable energy?

Spontaneous Solar Combustion

Can we please see your Avian and Bat Monitoring Plan?

Aug. 22, 2014 6:42 p.m. ET  THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The sprawling Ivanpah solar power station in the Mojave Desert probably never would have been built without environmental activists and the subsidies and mandates they created, so there's more than a little irony that BrightSource Energy, Google and another clean-tech utility are now getting an education in the green opposition that bedevils other American businesses. Lobbies like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society are turning on solar farms for avian mass murder.

Ivahpah's solar thermal technology uses 300,000 giant computer-controlled mirrors spread over 3,500 acres to follow the sun and concentrate energy on water towers, where boiler turbines generate electricity. The problem with this $2.2 billion feat of engineering is that birds that fly into the 800 degrees Fahrenheit rays sometimes singe or catch fire in midair. Plant workers call them "streamers" after the trail of smoke that follows the carcasses to the ground after they ignite, according to a recent Associated Press investigation.

The Ivanpah Solar ElectirIc Generating System in Primm, Nev.

The Center for Biological Diversity speculates that Ivanpah will kill 28,000 birds a year. In a study earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's forensics laboratory calls the apparatus a "mega-trap" for insects, swallows, road runners, hawks and even monarch butterflies, "creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death."

The Biological Diversity folks are suing to force solar farms to install lights or noise alert warnings to encourage wildlife to adopt a different flight path. Some California legislators are accidentally sensible and want to ban plants like Ivanpah, which sounds like a deal for birds and taxpayers.

We got a no-irony-intended email from a lobbyist friend working for BrightSource on Thursday explaining "avian fatalities"—the plant's actual year-to-date body count is all of 321 in total, and only 133 of them related to so-called "solar flux"—and Ivanpah's Avian and Bat Monitoring and Management Plan. The company notes that as many as 3.7 billion birds each year are killed by cats and 980 million by crashing into walls.

This green-on-green showdown exquisitely captures the reason that the America that built the Hoover Dam in five years now has so much trouble building those "infrastructure" projects everybody in Washington and Sacramento claim to favor. Environmental review and permitting are often dragged out a decade or longer across a slew of lawsuits and federal and state agencies. Ivanpah was required to spend $34 million on a "Head Start" nursery for desert tortoises. Really.

So it is that the same beau monde activists who think the Keystone XL pipeline is a threat to civilization are now turning on non-fossil fuel power too. Maybe this time they'll feel cognitive dissonance, but then they never do.

WSJ: The public isn't buying billionaire Tom Steyer's anti-energy climate activist agenda

A Climate Crusader's Comeuppance

Billionaire Tom Steyer's vow to make politicians toe the green line isn't working out so well.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Aug. 14, 2014 7:22 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

As political comedowns go, there may be few to compare to the humbling of Tom Steyer. Six months after the climate activist roared on the national political scene vowing $100 million to impose his agenda on this fall's midterms, it would appear that this billionaire don't hunt.

Remember the liberal huzzahs that greeted the February pledge? The New York Times gave Mr. Steyer the front page, heralding a coming "hard-edge campaign of attack ads" that would pressure officials to "enact climate change measures" and persuade voters to back a climate agenda. Democrats hailed him as their new power broker, crowing about a war chest that could rival the Koch brothers and even up the midterm election odds. Environmentalists welcomed a white knight who would finally align the party and public behind their priorities.

Or not. Mr. Steyer at an Aspen conference this week revealed that little if any of this is happening. The left is as split over energy as it has ever been; the public isn't buying the climate line; and the hedge-fund-manager-turned-activist looks to be regrouping.

Tom Steyer at a public event in Richmond, Va.

The Steyer grand plan began unraveling from the start, when stories about his pledge noted that he might target Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu for her support of the Keystone XL pipeline. Mr. Steyer and his NextGen Climate Action PAC had in 2013 won activist praise for defeating a pro-pipeline Democrat in a Massachusetts primary, and the Louisiana idea was to start his midterm strategy with a similar litmus-test bang. A Landrieu attack would send a message: Democrats who bucked the climate agenda would get beaten, whereas those who embraced it would be rewarded with Mr. Steyer's campaign cash.

Democratic leaders instead flipped out, and quickly schooled Mr. Steyer in the political realities of red states and the magic Senate number of "51." Within days of the pledge, Steyer operative Chris Lehane was tamping down the Landrieu story, insisting Mr. Steyer did not plan to "tea party" Democrats. "We do think it's really, really, really important from a climate perspective that we maintain control of the Senate for Democrats," he explained.

Overlooked was that this single decision wiped Mr. Steyer's operation off most of the electoral map. If the billionaire could not attack pro-Keystone Democrats, he couldn't get them on board his agenda. And if they remained in support of Keystone, there was no way the leader of the anti-pipeline movement could—with any credibility—underwrite them. It's great to have $100 million to blow on midterms; not so great when you can't spend it in Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, Montana, Virginia, Kentucky or Georgia—for starters.

Mr. Steyer was left the scraps of a few Senate candidates who do oppose Keystone: Colorado's Mark Udall ; Iowa's Bruce Braley ; New Hampshire's Jeanne Shaheen. Only to then discover that few would benefit from his help—at least not in a state like Iowa, where support for the jobs-creating Keystone project is thunderous, and where Mr. Braley's opposition is a political liability. NextGen, which bragged in May that it would make climate a "wedge" issue in "political races," couldn't even bring itself to mention the environment in its first ad of the political season, against Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst. It instead hit her for supporting lower taxes.

It might also help if Mr. Steyer had the $100 million. His February vow was to match $50 million of his money to $50 million from donors, and he bragged that might be a "lowball" number. By last month, Politico was reporting that NextGen had raised all of $1.2 million. Seems Democratic donors have higher funding priorities than climate.

Thus Mr. Steyer's apparent sayonara this week in Colorado to that "hard-edge campaign of attack ads" and the "wedge." He explained that he now thinks the real problem for "pro-environment candidates like Mark Udall" is that their supporters are the "likeliest drop-off voters." So he will focus "not so much on TV ads" as the "18th-century politics" of getting "local people to talk to local voters" and get out the vote.

And what about selling the public on a climate agenda? "This is much more about showing up than persuasion," he said.
This is a shadow of Mr. Steyer's soaring February promise. And even the new-and-reduced strategy may be of little use in Colorado. He played a big role last year ginning up green grass-roots anger over Keystone. This fury, ironically, boiled over into Colorado's natural-gas debate, where activists have revolted against Mr. Udall for his tentative support of fracking. Mr. Steyer might say Mr. Udall is "pro-environment," but his word is no longer good enough for the fractivists. Getting out that vote might prove hard.

In a high-stakes midterm every race matters and every dollar counts. And so Mr. Steyer's millions—a fair amount of which is going to Democratic political groups that are more effective than his own—still matter. But his NextGen meltdown is a lesson for liberal Democrats and activists looking to impose an anti-energy agenda on the country. The public isn't buying it.

Colorado retreats from referendum designed to outlaw oil & natural gas production

Colorado's Anti-Fracking Retreat

Democrats withdraw a referendum to protect Senator Mark Udall.

Aug. 5, 2014 7:19 p.m. ET     THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

How worried are Democrats about the November election? Look no further than Colorado, where this week they leaned on their green supporters to mute their anti-natural gas drilling agenda that is proving to be unpopular even in a liberal-trending state.

Democratic Congressman and environmental activist Jared Polis on Monday announced—through gritted teeth—that he is withdrawing his support for two ballot initiatives that would have effectively halted the drilling technique known as hydraulic oil- and gas fracturing in the state. Mr. Polis has poured millions of dollars of his own cash to promote the measures, which the anti-fracking left has advertised as a national showdown over natural gas.

Yet Mr. Polis now says he'll settle for a blue-ribbon commission to study the issue, a walk-back that puts partisan interests above his green principles. Will he now be excommunicated from the church of global warming?
Colorado Democrats were desperate to kill the ballot measures lest they contribute to the defeat of Governor John Hickenlooper and Senator Mark Udall. Colorado sits atop one of the richest shale plays in North America and is already among the top natural-gas producing states. One industry study found that in 2012 oil and gas contributed some $30 billion to the Colorado economy, and the industry supports thousands of jobs. A Quinnipiac poll in November showed that most Coloradans support fracking and a mere 34% oppose it. Independents back it 51% to 32%.

The Polis measures had inspired business groups to back a pro-fracking initiative, which meant the issue would have been at the center of the fall debate. Oil and gas groups planned to spend $20 million to defeat the anti-fracking initiatives, which would have banned drilling within 2,000 feet of homes or hospitals and would have given local governments effective vetoes over new wells.

Sen. Mark Udall (D., Colo.) Associated Press

Fracking has become a new fault line in the Democratic Party, with rich greens squaring off against workers who want the well-paying jobs that fracking provides. Messrs. Hickenlooper and Udall have spent months dodging a clear position. The Governor had floated a possible legislative compromise, only to drop it last month when he couldn't get the Democratic legislature to pass new restrictions.

Mr. Udall has been pressured to take a stand by his GOP challenger, Congressman Cory Gardner, who is pointing out the economic benefits from fracking in North Dakota and Texas. Mr. Udall ran in 2008 as a full-throated green-energy champion, and only as Mr. Gardner has gained on him in the polls has he discovered the political virtues of fossil-fuel jobs. The Polis retreat is best understood as an attempt to save Mr. Udall and perhaps a Democratic Senate.

The press corps is portraying all of this as canny tactical politics, which it could turn out to be. But the retreat also shows that the anti-fossil fuel absolutism that dominates the Democratic left lacks a majority even in a state that President Obama carried twice. Mr. Polis had presented his initiatives as a national referendum on fracking and in that sense he was right. Democrats are now hoping to duck the issue through the election and then use the blue-ribbon commission to give them cover to limit fracking next year.

The Colorado energy fight echoes the national Democratic energy strategy. Majority Leader Harry Reid refuses to allow Senate votes on numerous pro-energy measures that have bipartisan support. This allows Democrats like Mr. Udall to claim to support energy jobs even as the White House blocks the Keystone XL pipeline, more drilling permits and more natural gas exports.

Voters shouldn't be fooled by the Colorado ruse. Mr. Polis wanted a referendum on fracking, and the way to give him what he wanted is by defeating the Democrats he is now trying to protect from the political consequences of his policies.

Also today in the Wall Street Journal:

Stimulus for Clunkers

A new study shows the Obama program cost car makers money.

Aug. 5, 2014 7:34 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The annals of failed government programs always yield new surprises, and the latest is one for the ages. The White House can't even pay people to buy new cars without harming car makers.

In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper this month, economists at Texas A&M return to Cash for Clunkers, the 2009 stimulus fillip that dispensed vouchers worth as much as $4,500 if people turned in their old cars for destruction and bought a new set of wheels. Mark Hoekstra, Steven Puller and Jeremy West report their "striking" finding that the $3 billion program's two-month run subtracted between $2.6 billion and $4 billion from the auto industry.

The irony is that the goals were to help Detroit through the recession by subsidizing sales and to please the green lobby by putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road. By pulling forward purchases that consumers would make later anyway, the Obama Administration also hoped to add to GDP. Christina Romer, then chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, called Cash for Clunkers "very nearly the best possible countercyclical fiscal policy in an economy suffering from temporarily low aggregate demand."

The A&M economists had the elegant idea of comparing the buying behavior of Texas drivers who owned cars that barely qualified for cash (those that got 18 miles per gallon of gas or less) and those that barely did not (19 mph). Using state DMV sales records, this counterfactual allowed them to isolate the effects of the Cash for Clunkers incentives and show what would have happened without the program.

The two groups were equally likely to purchase a new vehicle over the nine month period that started with Cash for Clunkers, so the subsidy did not create any extra auto business. But in order to meet the fuel efficiency mandate, consumers who got the subsidy were induced to purchase smaller vehicle models with less horsepower that cost on average $2,500 to $3,000 less than those bought by their ineligible peers. The clunkers bought more Corollas, and everybody else more Chevys.

Extrapolated nationally, auto revenues may have plunged by more than what the government spent. And any environmental benefits cannot be justified under the federal social cost of carbon estimate of $33 a ton. Prior research from 2009 and 2013 has shown that the program cost between $237 and $288 a carbon ton.

The basic economic illogic of Cash for Clunkers is that you can't create wealth by destroying serviceable assets and then force-feeding consumer spending on replacements. But the saving grace was supposed to be that at least the auto makers benefited from a government-sponsored firesale on their products. Now that illusion has collapsed too. If Cash for Clunkers was "the best possible" stimulus, maybe that helps explain why the economy is still limping along six years later.

WSJ: Postmodern Hypocracy: Tom Steyer ruined the planet before he offered to save it

A Climate Activist Bags Himself

Tom Steyer ruined the planet before he offered to save it

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr
July 8, 2014 7:10 p.m. ET    THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

In "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," a Hemingway story, a man goes big game hunting who should have stayed home. Tom Steyer maybe should have stayed home.

The hedge-fund king has sought to propel himself to the top circle of Democratic money men and possible future officeholders on the strength of his concern about global warming. He wants to spend $100 million this year influencing the midterm elections. All the media lately wants to talk about, though, is his thoroughly postmodern hypocrisy.

The New York Times is the latest to investigate his former hedge fund's investments to increase the output of Indonesian and Australian coal mines to feed China during a period when China surpassed the U.S. as the world's biggest carbon-dioxide emitter.

The Times report treads in the footsteps of a lengthy Reuters reconstruction, which follows the Canadian press's detailed reporting of his firm's tar sands investments. Many stories are festooned with environmentalist comments lamenting the damage Mr. Steyer did to the planet before he decided to save it. 

 Tom Steyer speaks at the Democratic National Convention, Sept. 5, 2012

That a man's politics are against his economic interests might normally speak well for the sincerity of his politics. A better target of media investigation might be those who loudly preach climate calamity while lining up for green handouts, which would amplify some truly inconvenient truths. But never mind. It couldn't be happening to a more deserving guy.

Mr. Steyer made his money wherever money was to be made. Then, when he wanted to start a new career, claimed to have experienced a "road to Damascus" conversion on climate and energy at age 55.

By his own account, his transfiguration was induced by a long Rolling Stone article by activist Bill McKibben. Mr. McKibben's article, like all such articles, offered zero evidence (which remains elusive) of man's actual contribution to observed warming, let alone a pending catastrophe.

Mr. Steyer thereupon convened two-dozen activists for a seminar at which, as the New Yorker reported, "there was no debate about the science and little debate about the policy prescriptions."

He may be sincere, but does this not shriek of a man who convinces himself, or allows himself to be convinced, that mouthing the right liturgy and casting the right imprecations (while pouring millions into open palms) is the easy path to political grace?

He wouldn't be the first to consider himself "passionate" on the subject of global warming without being quite so passionate as to delve into its complexities and ambiguities. But you might at least expect a shrewd latecomer to notice a few things—such as how signally the standard doom-mongering and oil-bashing has failed to move the needle. But then the very clichéd-ness of Mr. Steyer's adopted patter has been his lever to the overnight visibility and pseudo-influence that he apparently aspires to.

And we do mean pseudo-influence. He vilifies the Koch brothers ("evil persons"), and lobbies universities and foundations to dump their fossil energy holdings, though the only effect is to transfer those holdings to investors like Mr. Steyer's former hedge fund that are immune to pressure and unwilling to forgo the profits from meeting the world's wholly non-illusory demand for energy.

Advised by Clintonites John Podesta and Chris Lehane, he would spend millions to drive up the negatives of those candidates (invariably Republican) he would "destroy" (his word). But even if he succeeds in shifting the outcome of one or two close races, it will be because voters are angry at big oil over gas prices, not global warning.

In case he hasn't noticed, the world is embarked on a multi-decade fossil-energy investment boom. A sliver of a sliver is $2.5 trillion the International Energy Agency says North America will invest in oil infrastructure alone in the next 20 years—of which the Keystone pipeline would be 0.2%.

A true revolution would be a new breed of climate activist who admitted what they didn't know and toned down their absurd pretense that they're going to ban or seriously curb fossil fuel by fiat. If they were smart, they would put all their effort into winning government funding for battery research. But there are reasons, quite apart from lack of imagination, which is the nicest explanation of Mr. Steyer's shrill imposture, that this doesn't happen.

Our political system is adept at making use of people like Mr. Steyer. Democrats will gladly spend his $100 million, then go back to their real environmental business, which is green cronyism. Happily Mr. Steyer's fate won't be that of the Hemingway character—who finally got to prove his merit while accidentally being shot in the head by his wife. But like Al Gore before him, Mr. Steyer will be able to say of his impact on the climate debate: I softened up the public to be milked for green handouts that did nothing for climate change.