Barack Obama & The Danger Of His Energy Policies

Billions of dollars were wasted by the Obama administration on supposed "green" or "clean" energy stimulus programs. States and utility companies took the bait, the economy and consumers took the hit, and the nation suffers. It is as if a suicide pact has been made, only you and I didn't agree to it.

A case in point would be Maine. Anthony Watts writes,

On September 26, 2012, the Maine Heritage Policy Center and Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research released a study which found that Maine’s current Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) Law, which mandates the minimum and maximum amount of energy consumers must purchase from various sources, will raise the cost of electricity in Maine by 8% in 2017. This 8% increase amounts to approximately $145 million in statewide consumption costs, and would cost Maine approximately 995 jobs, $85 million in real disposable income, decrease investment in the state by $11 million, and increase the average household electricity bill by $80 per year.

North Carolina also has an insane law requiring a percentage of so-called "renewable energy" usage in our state. Multiply this across each state in America doing this and imagine the damage to our economy from Obama's energy policies.

The Manhattan Institute reports:

"Motivated by a desire to reduce carbon emissions, and in the absence of federal action to do so, 29 states (and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) have required utility companies to deliver specified minimum amounts of electricity from "renewable" sources, including wind and solar power."

"There is growing evidence that the costs may be too high—that the price tag for purchasing renewable energy, and for building new transmission lines to deliver it, may not only outweigh any environmental benefits but may also be detrimental to the economy, costing jobs rather than adding them. "

How did this happen? Obama handed out stimulus money. In 2009, The New York Times reported,

“It’s an investment that will double the amount of renewable energy produced over the next three years,” said Mr. Obama, who also promised that the bill would help “transform the way we use energy.”

The text of the bill is posted by the House Appropriations Committee here. This detailed summary is particularly helpful.

The provisions include:

• A large sum for energy efficiency, including $5 billion for low-income weatherization programs; over $6 billion in grants for state and local governments; and several billion to modernize federal buildings, with a particular emphasis on energy efficiency.
• $11 billion for “smart grid” investments.
• $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects (otherwise known as “clean coal”).
• $2 billion for research into batteries for electric cars.
• $500 million to help workers train for “green jobs.”
• A three-year extension of the “production tax credit” for wind energy (as well as a tax credit extension for biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and some hydropower projects).
• The option, available to many developers, of turning their tax credits into direct cash, with the government underwriting 30 percent of a project’s cost.

Democrat Governor Perdue (of "suspend the elections" fame) came up with an executive order for Offshore Wind Power. Evidently, the "executive order" disease is not just in the White House.

"Gov. Bev Perdue (D-NC) signed an executive order to create the Offshore Wind Economic Development Task Force, in conjunction with her veto of Senate Bill 709, which would have pushed the development of offshore oil and gas, as well as onshore gas fracking."

In case you are clueless as to why this is going on and who is driving this unconscionable madness, a commenter on Watts Up With That helped me out with the list of quotes below. Read them and know your enemy!

• “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” – Obama, POTUS
• “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe” – Steven Chu, Obama’s Energy Secretary
• “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States” – John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar
• “Isn’t the only hope for this planet the total collapse of industrial civilization? Is it not our responsibility to ensure that this collapse happens?” – Maurice Strong, United Nations Environment Programme Director
• “My three goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world.” – David Foreman, Earth First co-founder
• “In my opinion, these CEOs of fossil energy companies should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” James Hansen, NASA Goddard
• “We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.” Gene Hashmi, Greenpeace communications director
• “We have wished, we eco freaks, for a disaster… to bomb us into the stone age, where we might live like Indians with our localism, our gardens, our homemade religion.” – Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogue
• “In the history of mankind we witness Nature’s desperate struggle against an error of her own evolution…. If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die,” Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola.