Virginia Rep on the Energy Act of 07
Last December 6th US Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia delivered a stern lecture to the Tax and Spend Dem Party regarding the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It seems that the Act is full of bizarre language, much of which may sound perfectly PC to the casual observer, but actually thrusts knives into the back of millions upon millions of Americans.
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is destined to do none of those things, but instead will further energy dependence and insecurity, as well as costing a national arm and leg. Particularly egregious is the Statutory Demand that fuels on Federal lands be excluded from bio-energy production, as if burning down millions of acres of America’s forests is preferable to saving forests by disposing of the excess fuels in a safe and productive manner.
Evidently, that is exactly what the Donkey Party wants: raging infernos that catastrophically destroy your heritage environment and mine. Burn, baby, burn, in the most destructive way possible.
The honorable Bob Goodlatte of Virginia is one rational thinker who had the gumption to stand up and call them on it last month. Here is the full text of Rep. Goodlatte’s House Floor remarks of Dec. 6th:
Statement of Rep. Bob Goodlatte
Revision and extension of Floor Statement on H.R. 6
Originally submitted on December 6, 2007I rise today in opposition to this reckless energy policy, which will do absolutely nothing to make us energy independent, or lower energy costs. This bill sets us on a dangerous path and ties our hands in a regulatory mess to ensure that we cannot produce domestic energy.
Like my colleagues, I believe we should find solutions to address the growing demand for energy. The biggest concern facing the farmers and ranchers of this country are increased input costs from higher fuel prices and fertilizer. The U.S. fertilizer industry relies upon natural gas as the fundamental feedstock for the production of nitrogen fertilizer. The rest of the U.S. farm sector also depends on significant amounts of natural gas for food processing, irrigation, crop drying, heating farm buildings and homes, the production of crop protection chemicals, and, let’s not forget, ethanol biofuel production. In addition to the farm sector, the forest products industry relies more on natural gas than any other fossil fuel and energy amounts to the third largest manufacturing cost for the industry.
Unbelievably, this legislation contains no new energy supplies in it and does nothing to relieve the burdens of increased costs on producers who provide the food and fiber for American consumers. It seems that the Majority’s plan to move toward energy independence includes limiting domestic energy production and imposing new government mandates that will prove to be costly and burdensome to the American people.
Ethanol fix needed
This editorial by the Journal Editorial Board appeared in this morning’s Rapid City (SD) Journal [here]. They too take exception to the new energy bill’s programmatic exclusion of bio-energy from wood wastes from National Forests [here]:
The new energy bill that President Bush signed into law at the end of December already needs a fix. H.R. 6 has lots of good news for the ethanol industry in South Dakota, with its policies that promote the increased use of that biofuel in our nation’s gasoline supply. But it also contains at least one policy provision that is disappointing to people who hope to increase the production of cellulosic ethanol.
Late in the legislation-making process, the federal energy bill was changed to discourage the use of wood chips, tree limbs, slash piles and other wood wastes from national forests — including the Black Hills National Forest — by bio-refineries that would use those feedstocks to make ethanol. The energy bill now excludes ethanol derived from materials collected on national forests from being counted toward our new ethanol-usage mandate and the financial incentives that go along with that.
Since one of the stated goals of our new national energy policy is to be producing 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022 — and since 21 billion of those gallons is supposed to come from biomass materials other than corn — that seems like bad public policy to us.
Often, the making of laws, like the making of sausage, is something best done out of public view. Still, we’d love to have the Democratic leadership explain how that particular provision got included so late in the game.
It deprives the forestry products industry in the Black Hills of an important secondary market for its wood wastes. Without a designation as “renewable biomass,” BHNF wood waste offers no incentive for ethanol blenders and refiners to purchase it as a source of fuel.
We think Congress needs to fix that flaw in the energy bill, and so does Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.
Her legislative director is weighing the congressional options to get that done after Congress reconvenes on Jan. 22, but it likely won’t happen without the passage of a new law.
The 2007 Farm Bill, which has yet to emerge from conference committee or be signed into law, does contain better news for cellulosic ethanol supporters in western South Dakota. Both the House and Senate versions contain Sen. John Thune’s Biofuels Innovation Program, which does provide incentives for the collection of BHNF wood wastes.
Whether via the Farm Bill, stand-alone legislation, or as an amendment to another bill, we urge Congress to fix this problem. Without a remedy in law, the Black Hills will be deprived of an important economic opportunity.
The Old Hook Tender’s Admonishment
By Bear Bait
DeFazio has seniority, and a reputation as a loose cannon, albeit a smurf loose cannon, and has to run for office every two years. He flies all over the deck in rolling seas, but doesn’t do any good or damage. Just saves himself and his job, while waxing smart about stuff he does not seem to be able to change or alter or move forward.
Democrats are a thin majority. They have been bedded with the radical and moderate wings of Eco-Advocacy, and their minders, the BINGOs, since Frampton was pooping yellow. The Dems, including Perilous Peter, will not vote to cut a tree in public forests because they cannot afford to lose votes in an election year. Under their Big Tent are more Greenies than there ever were folks employing people. Those advocating cutting trees do not have power base enough to sway a Democrat away from the no-cut status quo.
Public lands are the wilderness, and so should be protected and kept in the public grasp forever… unless you are in Nevada. Specifically Clark County, Nevada. Home to Las Vegas and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Thousands of acres of public land, wilderness study area, desert tortoise habitat, have been auctioned and sold to municipalities and private developers, all the money from the sales of the public lands staying in Nevada by Congressional law and special consent. $3 billion dollars worth of money staying in Nevada to be a honey pot for building public good. It is the all time greatest state slush fund ever. All from the sale of lands people in Montana or Vermont or Illinois thought they owned. Ha! Harry sold them for you, and his constituents kept the money. Funny how that works.
You have to understand Las Vegas, and Nevada, home to legalized gambling and brothels for all my lifetime. Meyer Lansky, the head of the Jewish mob, sent Bugsy Seigel to Las Vegas to begin the replacement of the Mob’s Havana and Miami gambling business, because Lansky knew Cuba was not stable and J.Edgar needed a new dress. So the Mob used the Eccles Salt Lake City banking empire as a depository of their money (tch tch… some have said “launder” in their reports), and that wonderful relationship between Reid’s Mormon faith and his constituency working with able gaming managers from the Mob, built Las Vegas. Good, law abiding, hard working Mormons running and working for the casinos, not drinking or gambling in their spare time, and the money poured in from out of town and stayed by design. But they ran out of land, and were surrounded by the unclaimed public domain managed by Interior’s BLM.
Reid has been the architect, vigorish hustler, and driving force to have those lands sold “for the public good” to Las Vegas public and private interests. The environmental values were mitigated by declaring great expanses of Nevada USFS and BLM land “wilderness,” with all the unclaimed ground water under them owned by Clark County. In fact, the whole state except 6 counties in the NE corner around Elko are not covered. Possibly because those are the counties where the big gold mines are. Nevada has a royalty tax on gold and other precious metals that stays in the county of origin.
If you look at an up-to-date map of Nevada, showing public land and private land, and compare it with one of 20 years ago, you will see the big new white donut of private land surrounding Las Vegas. It is noticeable in a state where over 80% of the land is federally owned. Or was. Harry is still alive, still Senate Majority Leader, and evidently still able to what Peter DeFazio never will be able to do: get something done to help his state. I read now that some of that slush fund is headed to Tahoe to buy private lands to buffer special places and bring them back into Federal ownership. Harry is spreading it around Nevada, and harvesting the good will.
Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, all have public land thwarting development. It will never get sold to private interests. For some reason the Mob is not in control here, yet, and our Mormon senators are not senior enough to get the job done, although Oregon should have a leg up on the others.
The Eco-Advocates negotiated deals in Nevada to save face. You have to wonder if they were just saving some legs from getting broken. Plus the values here are nowhere near Las Vegas values. There the chosen few can build billion dollar casinos. Here you have a hard time siting a Home Depot. And even Petulant Peter cannot help you. But $3 billion dollars can, together with an open door to more whenever the powers that be decide it is needed. Wow!! Reid has absolute power. Schools are getting land from the Feds in Nevada for special rates that make miners blush. If it has corrupted him, only the record will show. And it will. His children are in the same class of entitlement as Ted Steven’s are in Alaska, and that is undoing Ted as I write.
So, my take on the reality of thinning in Federal forests is that it is not going to happen as long as Democrats run things, or try to woo the votes so that they might run things. Peter Piss Up a Rope, the Rhode Island white hope, can suggest or promise anything, but he is trying to deliver papers without shoes, a bike, a paper bag, or a job from the publisher.
A great thermal breath… some words on paper… the old hook tender’s admonishment about wishing into one hand and pooping in the other… “Which one fills up first, kid? It ain’t gonna quit raining until it does. Try to make a bonus on that hemlock and the butt cut… and hide behind that tall stump when we go ahead on ‘er.” — bear bait
DeFazio Plan to Protect Old Growth and Create Jobs
Congressman Peter DeFazio (D, OR) of the 4th Congressional District (where I live) has sent me personally (along with a few hundred thousand other people at taxpayers expense) a mailer with a statement about federal forests. I post it here in full:
I opposed former President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan in 1994. I was convinced it would not provide certainty in timber supply, and would not protect the small amount of remaining old growth. At that time, I proposed a compromise solution to provide a predictable supply of timber for local mills and protect the remaining old growth. However, my compromise was opposed by the timber industry and the environmental community.
Conflicting Demands
Re the previous post: isn’t the gummit sending a mixed message here?
How does the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 jive with USFS Chief Gail Kimbell’s executive decision to declare 400 million acres of private property “wildland”?
My property out here in Flyover Country is now slated to be burned to smithereens in a federal “Wildland Use Fire Used For Resource Benefit,” a bureaucratic euphemism for Let-It-Burn megafires that rage for miles from off the Federal Estate, destroying public and private rural and urban property alike. (It’s true; they have a GIS computer program that makes maps of private land they intend to incinerate in whoofoos.)
How am I supposed to produce biomass slash to solve the Nation’s Energy Crisis while you, the US Government, is burning my place down?
I mean, the two demands are mutually exclusive. You can’t burn me out and expect me to crack oil from wood chips simultaneously, can you? If the carbon burns in a whoofoo and goes up into the sky, you can’t pump it into your tank, right?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Not to mention that it’s my cake, not yours, anyway.
If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not be burned out by a federal whoofoo megafire. Please tell Gail (because she is not paying close attention to SOS Forests like she should be).
By the way, who put into the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 the wording:
but not forests or forestlands that are ecological communities with a global or State ranking of critically imperiled, imperiled, or rare pursuant to a State Natural Heritage Program, old growth forest, or late successional forest.
???? Names, please. Who among you takes responsibility?
Did anybody inside the Beltway read this thing before they voted on it?
Here’s a tip: you can’t save old-growth forests by burning them down. Everybody knows that. Everybody agrees that old-growth forests require stewardship, including biomass removal, to be protected, maintained, and perpetuated. It’s a consensus among forest scientists. The debate is over.
Here’s an Inconvenient Truth: in order to save our public forests and critically imperiled, imperiled, or rare ecological communities, human beings must tend them.
Something is rotten inside the Beltway. BINGOs have taken over our government. There will be more and deadlier megafires, more forests, homes, and communities destroyed, if the behind-the-curve enviro-wackos have anything to say about it, and evidently they do.
Sacrosanct Biomass
The following Letter to Congress regarding bio-energy was written by Charles J. Hendricks, USFS (ret). In his letter Mr. Hendricks points out that Congress has decided to “protect” federal forests by banning the use of federal logging slash for bio-energy production.
Evidently Congress would prefer that federal slash burn in place in horrendous and catastrophic forest fires, rather than be put to any practical use. Instead of heating the homes of the citizenry, Congress would prefer to see homes of the citizenry burned to ashes in holocausts that start in overly dense federal forests, leap across property lines, and scorch neighborhoods of the voters and taxpayers.
Don’t think we voters and taxpayers haven’t noticed this about you, Congress, because we have.
To be fair, Congress-types are just being weenies as usual, groveling for every monied special interest and serving none.
Another part of the problem is that Gaia worship is fraught with inconsistencies (due to the absurdity of the theology). Mr. Hendricks requests rationality from Congress and we support his call, although we have diminished expectations (due to the absurdity of the politicos).
Parking Out Camp Baldwin
Camp Baldwin is a Boy Scout camp west of Dufur, OR, on the east slopes of the northern Oregon Cascades. In 1985 the Columbia Pacific Council of the B.S.A. engaged my forestry consulting firm to evaluate the forests conditions of Camp Baldwin.
Camp Baldwin is forested with ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, grand fir. There are a few remnant old-growth ponderosas, but not many. Most fell to pioneer logging long ago.
Camp Baldwin has a long history. It is close to the Old Oregon Trail, the segment that went over Barlow Pass. When the first pioneers saw them, the east slope forests were open and park-like, with widely-spaced ponderosa pines and grassy understories. They were more or less pine savannas except along water courses and at high elevations, where other tree species found refuge from the frequent, regular, seasonal anthropogenic fires.
Human-set fires created open, park-like forests where individual trees grew to very old ages. The culprits were the Sahaptin-speaking residents of the mid-Columbia. They did not have chain saws or sawmills, and had little use for trees other than as firewood, so why not set fires?
