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In his January 2008 column for GreenBiz.com, Brad Allenby penned an essay entitled “Climate Wise – The Dangerous Rise of Carbon Fundamentalism.” In this essay, he provides examples of how carbon metrics are becoming pervasive in areas of life – and within ideological frameworks – that never had anything to do with the environment.

It is possible to love the earth but reject carbon fundamentalism. (Photo: US EPA)

To name a few, he mentions a proposal in Sweden to charge “carbon credits” per child and pay carbon offsets to people who get sterilized, an article in the New Scientist suggesting obese people are using an abusive amount of carbon through their immoral gluttony, another suggesting men use more than their fair share of carbon because they’re bigger and they breath more air. As he says:

“…the sheer volume of articles, the vicious language and the retranslation of so many social and cultural trends — divorce, obesity, gender conflict and much else — into terms of carbon footprint suggests that something more fundamental is going on.“

Allenby then suggests the moral outrage being summoned is undermining rational debate about climate change, as well as undermining science. He states:

“The data driven and exploratory processes of science are choked off by inculcation of belief systems that rely on archetypal and emotive strength. Importantly, the extreme language is directed not against those who deny anthropogenic climate change completely, but those who, while accepting the existence of the phenomenon, do not believe it is an existential and immediate crisis. The authority of science is relied on not for factual enlightenment but as ideological foundation for authoritarian policy prescriptions which might otherwise be difficult to implement.“

We could not agree more. In a December 2007 post “Inconvenient Facts About Global Warming,” we question the existence of a “denial industry,” and instead we list the participants in what one might term the “alarm industry.” From that perspective, it is clear this latest strand of virulent fundamentalism – carbon fundamentalism – is tolerated and indeed encouraged by virtually all powerful vested interests on earth.

Here’s why:

• Insurance companies get to charge higher premiums
• Fossil fuel companies get to keep prices (and profits) high
• Politicians get to enact new taxes
• Public sector entities get new tax revenue to fund their pensions
• Environmental organizations get more funds
• Left wing activists get a new basis to attack private ownership
• Labor unions get more jobs, especially in the public sector
• Lawyers get a new basis to file lawsuits
• Wall street gets to trade emissions credits
• Climate researchers get more grant requests funded
• United Nations bureaucrats get a guaranteed revenue stream

And along with those special interests, sadly, add the inspired hoards of greentech entrepreneurs who are spending precious time groveling for carbon-offset funded subsidies and other government handouts, instead of pursuing innovations that win competitively in the free market.

Last week we posted another feature by famed meteorologist Richard Lindzen, who agrees there is some warming, but does not believe it is a crisis. Reader reactions that latest feature “The Fluid Envelope – A Case Against Climate Alarmism,” are posted here.

Sometimes life does not seem fair, especially when prisoners seem to live better than the rest of us. In the Norwegian prison of Bastoey, inmates roam free on an island without fences. They have access to beaches and landscapes that many of us would pay to visit. As punishment for a variety of crimes, ranging from murder to petty theft, inmates are forced to live on this island and must produce their own meals by farming the land. Everything is extremely efficient: Wood-waste is used for heat and solar panels installed by inmates provide much of the electricity used on the island.

One of the main benefits of running this sort of prison is the low cost associated with its design. Solar panels cut electricity by up to 70%, staff is minimal, and prisoners handle the food production and preparation.

It might seem like a strange form of punishment, but prisoners are obviously not allowed to leave the island and have to work on a daily basis for their food. They are restricted to living a certain way and many tire of the lifestyle. The environment is a healthy one, though, and this is exactly what is needed to rehabilitate troubled individuals.

The calm demeanor of the inmates on this island is surreal when compared to the daily riots, killings, and other meltdowns that occur in many other prisons throughout the world. Of course there are only 115 inmates to deal with and this small number makes managing the community much easier.

Everything harvested in this community is organic and natural. No pesticides are used on the various grains, fruits and vegetables that prisoners farm. Cows, sheep and chickens are taken care of on the island to provide additional protein in the self made meals. Nothing is wasted either; any food not used by the Bastoey prison is sent to other prisons.

This is the first ecological prison in the world. Instead of restricting criminals in cells where productivity is minimal, Norway has found a way for prisoners to provide for themselves in an ecologically friendly environment. Some may argue that there are incentives to commit a crime just to live in this ‘resort’. But numbers indicate that they know what they are doing: Norway has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. It seems that the modern attitude adopted by their society is definitely working.

It’s easy to imagine such an impressive output of gas could be harming the earth. (Photo: US

Editor’s Note: Our charter to report on clean technology and the status of species and ecosystems seems to always bring us back to one overriding distraction – global warming alarm – and small wonder. We are in the midst of one of the most dramatic transformations of political economy in the history of the world – and nobody is watching. “The debate is over on global warming,” goes the consensus, and even if that were a healthy or accurate notion, why has this consensus translated into hardly any vigorous debate over what would be a rational response?

Despite ongoing rhetoric to the contrary from virtually every environmental nonprofit in existance, the United States has been an extraordinarily responsible nation. We listened to our environmental movement; we institutionalized it. On every front there has been huge progress over the past 30-40 years. Our air and water are orders of magnitude cleaner even though our population has doubled. Our landfills our ultra-safe. We have set aside vast tracts of wilderness, rescued countless endangered species. Our food supply is scrupulously monitored. And every year our technology and our prosperity delivers new options to eliminate more pollution and live healthier lives. So what happened?

In the rest of the world there is also reason for great optimism, despite some discouraging challenges that continue to grip humanity. Human population is voluntarily leveling off, so that within 25-30 years the number of people on planet earth will peak at around 8.5 billion – and every time the projection is revisited, that estimate drops. At an even faster pace, humanity is urbanizing – and this voluntary movement is taking people out of the vast and potentially endangered forests and other biomes faster than population increase replaces them. Land is becoming abundant again. So what’s wrong?

Technology promises abundant energy within a few decades, using clean fossil fuel as we systematically replace it with solar, nuclear, run-of-river hydroelectric, enhanced geothermal, wind, possibly biofuel. Technology promises abundant water within a few decades, as we learn how to recycle every drop of water used in the urban environment, convert many crops to drip irrigation, and develop massive desalination capacity. So why don’t we get to work?

The reason is because of global warming alarm. The bells of warning are ringing so loud that CO2 is all that matters anymore. Want to stop using petroleum? Then burn the rainforests for biofuel. Want to stop using coal? Then forget about installing affordable scrubbers to remove the soot that billows from coal fired power plants across burgeoning Asia – why clean up something that needs to be shut down? Want to save allegedly scarce open space? Then cram everyone into ultra-high density “infill” and destroy every semi rural neighborhood in the western world. Make housing unaffordable, then mandate taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing. And do it all in the name of reducing CO2 emissions.

Today, after reading two documents from the website of the Attorney General of California, “Mitigation Measures,” and “Global Warming Contrarians and the Falsehoods they Promote,” I became so alarmed at what we are willingly, blindly bringing upon ourselves because of all this CO2 alarm that I contacted Dr. Richard Lindzen, who has already contributed two lengthy articles to EcoWorld, “Current Behavior of Global Mean Surface Temperature,” and “Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm?” I asked Dr. Lindzen if he still held the views he does. He replied emphatically in the affirmative, and sent me the article that follows. Dr. Lindzen, along with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., with whom EcoWorld recently published the exclusive “Interview with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr.,” are both internationally respected atmospheric scientists. And both of them, in somewhat different ways, are quite concerned about the overemphasis on CO2.

Anyone who is championing extreme measures to reduce anthropogenic CO2 should attempt for themselves to understand the science. As Dr. Lindzen wrote me earlier today, policymakers such as Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger “can be excused given the degree to which the environmental movement has taken over the professional societies.”

“Science” has become the trump card that drowns out reason – what great irony. And the scientific establishment itself has become politicized. And if you read the mitigation measures being proposed, just imagine if there was nothing we could do to affect global warming – which even some of the lead authors of the IPCC studies themselves acknowlege – and see if you want to live in the brave new world we are leading ourselves into by our own gullible noses.

Dramatic and positive global economic and technological developments, along with voluntary and irreversible global demographic trends, are about to deliver us a future where we enjoy unprecedented environmental health, abundance and prosperity. But to do this we need to preserve our economic and personal freedoms. Will the measures being proposed – especially in trendsetting California – fruitlessly combat a problem that doesn’t exist, crush economic growth and trample on individual freedom, and rob humanity of this hopeful destiny?

- Ed “Redwood” Ring

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

What will be his legacy?

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations.

Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the Goebbelian substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.

Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and previous warm periods appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages.

Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat. For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007), suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. Supporting the notion that man has not been the cause of this unexceptional change in temperature is the fact that there is a distinct signature to greenhouse warming: surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the surface.

Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not all of even this really small warming is due to man. This further implies that all models predicting significant warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising. According to the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greenhouse forcing from man made greenhouse gases is already about 86 % of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 (with about half coming from methane, nitrous oxide, freons and ozone), and alarming predictions depend on models for which the sensitivity to a doubling for CO2 is greater than 2C which implies that we should already have seen much more warming than we have seen thus far, even if all the warming we have seen so far were due to man.

This contradiction is rendered more acute by the fact that there has been no significant global warming for the last ten years. Modelers defend this situation by arguing that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming, and that models adequately account for natural unforced internal variability. However, a recent paper (Ramanathan, 2007) points out that aerosols can warm as well as cool, while scientists at the UKs Hadley Centre for Climate Research recently noted that their model did not appropriately deal with natural internal variability thus demolishing the basis for the IPCCs iconic attribution. Interestingly (though not unexpectedly), the British paper did not stress this. Rather, they speculated that natural internal variability might step aside in 2009, allowing warming to resume. Resume? Thus, the fact that warming has ceased for the past decade is acknowledged.

Whether or not someone is a climate alarmist should have no bearing on the strength or purity of their environmentalist convictions. (Read “Global Warming Questions”)

Given that the evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly suggests that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished.

However, the really important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant. Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. all depend not on some global average of surface temperature, but on a huge number of regional variables including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind.

The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal. Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring is almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts: famine for the 1980′s, global cooling in the 1970′s, Y2K and many others. Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more.

This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.

Given the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past 2 years. When an issue like global warming is around for over twenty years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown

What is his dream?

The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power and influence are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats for whom control of CO2 is a dream-come-true.

After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for saving the world. Nations have seen how to exploit this issue in order to gain competitive advantages. But, by now, things have gone much further.

The case of ENRON is illustrative in this respect. Before disintegrating in a pyrotechnic display of unscrupulous manipulation, ENRON had been one of the most intense lobbyists for Kyoto. It had hoped to become a trading firm dealing in carbon emission rights. This was no small hope. These rights are likely to amount to over a trillion dollars, and the commissions will run into many billions. Hedge funds are actively examining the possibilities. It is probably no accident that Gore, himself, is associated with such activities . The sale of indulgences is already in full swing with organizations selling offsets to ones carbon footprint while sometimes acknowledging that the offsets are irrelevant.

The possibilities for corruption are immense. Archer Daniels Midland (Americas largest agribusiness) has successfully lobbied for ethanol requirements for gasoline, and the resulting demand for ethanol is already leading to large increases in corn prices and associated hardship in the developing world (not to mention poorer car performance).

And finally, there are the numerous well meaning individuals who have allowed propagandists to convince them that in accepting the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue For them, their psychic welfare is at stake.

With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed.

About the Author: Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is reprinted here with permission from the author.

No survey of utility scale solar thermal power companies is complete without mention of Solel Solar Systems Ltd., headquartered in Israel with operations in Spain and the USA. In December 2007 Solel’s purchase power agreement (PPA) with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was approved by California’s Public Utility Commission for a solar thermal plant with 553 megawatts of output. Even without thermal storage to optimize the solar energy, the “Mojave Solar Project” is expected to produce 1,388 gigawatt-hours of power per year.

A Solel parabolic trough faces due west, capturing the last energy of the day. (Photo: Solel)

Solel has experience supplying components for the solar thermal installations at Kramer Junction, which for over 20 years have produced up to 350 megawatts of output, and remain the largest solar thermal electric power complex in the world.

More recently, in 2006, Solel supplied Spain’s Sacyr-Vallehermoso with solar receiver systems to build a 150 megawatt solar thermal plant. Last month, Solel signed an agreement to supply Spain’s Aries Solar Termoelectrica, S.L. , with systems for a 100 megawatt solar thermal plant.

There are several ways to harvest solar thermal energy to produce utility scale quantities of electricity, and at least three variants remain cutting edge: There is the “power tower” design favored by Brightsource Energy – where a central boiler is placed on a tower surrounded by hundreds of two-axis tracking mirrors that each reposition themselves continuously to track the sun and keep it focused on the boiler. This design has the advantages of centralized plumbing, and as well, the mirrors in the solar field can be placed on individual poles which simplifies site preparation. Another promising design is being pioneered by Ausra, where ten mirrors, all on a north-south axis and turning on a single-axis tracker, focus the sunlight onto a single tube that runs in the air above all of the mirrors and parallel to them. This design also economizes the amount of plumbing required, and requires far fewer tracking systems which are only single-axis.

Solel’s solar receivers use what is known as the “parabolic trough” design, where each mirrored trough is curved to reflect the sun’s rays onto a tube that runs lengthwise above each trough at the focal point. These receivers are also single axis, running north to south. They turn to face the sun when it rises in the east, and reposition themselves to point at the sun throughout the day so they are facing west each day at sunset. While this design requires more materials than Ausra’s design, it is time-tested, and may be more efficient, since a heat exchanger is positioned immediately above each reflecting mirror. Solel’s recently launched “UVAC 2008″ solar receiver system captures sunlight and converts it to heat for clean power generation with 20% less heat loss than other receivers in the market,” according to testing by the National Renewal Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy in October 2007 – although it isn’t clear if Ausra’s design was included in that test.

With decades of experience in this market, and recent 100+ megawatt orders, Solel has as much experience as anyone in solar thermal technology. When we asked spokesperson Vanessa Lindlaw when the Mojave Solar Project would break ground, she stated they would be filing at the California Energy Commission by mid-year, and also were waiting to see if the U.S. Federal Investment Tax Credit would be renewed. Best case, the Mojave Solar Project could come online by 2011. It will consume nine square miles of desert and cost about $2.0 billion. While this equates roughly to $4.0 million per megawatt, and that is somewhat on the high side compared to conventional power plants, the complete absense of fuel expenses means Solel’s project should still be able to profitably sell electricity at around $.10 per kilowatt-hour.

If this 553 megawatt plant goes online, it will provide a significant share of California’s electricity consumption, at least during peak daytime usage. California’s electricity draw varies between around 50 gigawatts at peak and under 20 gigawatts at night. During mid-day, this single plant will probably be delivering about 1.25% of California’s entire electricity production. But as the electric age dawns, we’ll need more power than ever, if electrons are to begin to replace petroleum.

Everyone has come across photovoltaics on the news, on the road or through personal use. Roofs, cars, garden-lights, satellites, and calculators have all used photovoltaic systems to generate power from the sun. This technology still needs some improving before other fuels become obsolete. Cars still can’t run on solar power alone, for example, but with lower costs of production and increased efficiency the technology is becoming popular for individuals who want alternatives to electricity and fuel.

A company dedicated to improving the efficiency of these solar panel cells in Nanosolar (www.nanosolar.com). In fact, Nanosolar developed cells with world-record efficiency in 2006 and the U.S Department of energy awarded $20 million to the company in 2007. A lot of faith has been put into the potential of these cells. Founded in 2002, Nanosolar can now boast about owning the world’s largest solar cell factory in and the world’s largest panel-assembly factory in Berlin, Germany.

Nanosolar explains that they have developed the “world’s lowest-cost solar panel. Designed to halve the balance-of-system cost relative to competitive panels… Nanosolar is the first and so far only company in the world that has managed to make efficient solar cells work on a metal foil substrate that is both low cost and highly conductive. Our metal foil has a conductivity that is more than 20 times higher than that of the stainless steel used by others – and thus enables major cost reduction on the solar cell’s thin-film bottom electrode.”

Because these cells are less expensive does not mean that there is a catch. In fact, the company prides itself on testing these panels in the harsh environments of Arizona and Alaska and and they stand behind their 25 year warranty.

Nanosolar produces two varieties of solar paneling: The first is the Nanosolar Utility Panel. This panel is “specifically designed for utility-scale power plants…and is the industry-best solution for MW-sized PV systems.” The second panel is the “Nanosolar SolarPly.” This is a “light-weight solar-electric cell foil which can be cut to any size.”

Demand for these Nanosolar panels is so high that they are sold out for the next year. The potential for these cells is immense, so it is no surprise that many individuals are investing money in a product that will eventually pay for itself. Sunlight is free, after all.

Although we’ve been pretty much as outspoken as one can be – given this supposedly is not our passion – we haven’t been outspoken enough. In spite of the fact we believe in the ideals of unions, and their courageous legacy, we have criticized the pernicious influence of public sector unions over and over again, most recently earlier today in a piece entitled “CEQA is Hijacked” where we reported on a recent Sacramento Bee editorial taking the unusual step of exposing how unions use environmental laws to stop development of environmentally beneficial projects.

Here is one of the comments on this story, as posted on the Sacramento Bee’s website: “Environmental groups should be concerned that construction unions are blocking solar projects by exploiting the state’s environmental laws. Last summer the electrical workers’ union (IBEW) in Fresno objected on environmental grounds to a large solar panel installation project at the Fresno airport. California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE) is objecting to the construction of a solar hybrid power plant in Victorville with claims of how the solar panels are going to hurt the environment. Basically, any developer wanting to build a solar energy generation facility in California has to deal with the legal process of fighting baseless environmental objections, unless it succumbs to the extortion and gives unions a monopoly on the construction. Aside from the bad taste of giving into extortion, what developer wants to increase costs by limiting which contractors will bid on its work? When the promise of solar power fizzles out in California, unions will be largely to blame.”

In 2007, incredibly enough, California’s governor vetoed legislation that would have required any solar energy installation, even at the residential scale, to be installed by union workers. In 2007 Schwarzenegger also vetoed legislation that would have required striking public sector workers to continue to get paid – during the time they are on strike!

This state of affairs goes beyond extortion – as the commenter on the Bee’s website characterized it, or “greenmail,” as the Bee described it. It is too vast, too institutionalized, to be characterized by such feeble, episodic terms. It is a historic transfer of power from the people to the government. It is the death of democracy – for reasons you never read about in the newspaper. Ever since 1978, when a very naive Governor Brown acceded to the demands of unions to have full collective bargaining rights in the public sector, they have accumulated more power every year. They now pretty much control the policy and budget of every agency in California’s state, county and municipal governments. They pay themselves wages and benefits that – if you apply the present value of benefits during retirement to the years they work – give them compensation costing taxpayers 2-4 times what private sector workers receive for work requiring similar skills. They are by far the most powerful special interest in California.

Public employee unions spread the fallacious but incendiary argument that because a handful (thousands of people at most) of top executives have multi-million dollar compensation packages, it somehow justifies their excessive wage demands. The truth, that public employees should compare themselves to the millions of ordinary blue collar or white collar workers in the private sector, is conveniently ignored. Our public school students are taught this sort of propaganda by union indoctrinated teachers from the day they enter kindergarten to the day they graduate into the workforce. The cost of union labor has made all public services prohibitively expensive, including road building and other infrastructure. Public sector unions, hand in hand with environmental opportunists, are the reason we can’t afford homes or public services. The solution is drastic reform.

Public sector unions are not green. They are exploiting the environmental movement’s new momentum to spread fear of catastrophe into the minds of children and parents alike – and they love the way the whole “carbon currency” paradigm fits easily with their rhetoric that depends on bashing the wealthy. And when it comes to developing genuine innovations that might help the environment and reduce the price of energy – they see a threat and an opportunity. A threat because any competitive capitalist innovation that might benefit everyone is a threat to unions whose workers hold privileged jobs at publically regulated energy monopolies. An opportunity because if they can control these new technologies that will eventually be even more cost-effective than conventional energy sources – at the same time as they convince a gullible public to artificially drive the cost of energy sky high to save the planet – the margins will get greater still, and their cut will rise accordingly.

This is the sad reality of green economics in 2007 California. No serious discussion of environmental policy can ignore the question of excessive union influence over state and local governments, and what to do about it. And no proposal should go forward that allows, however indirectly, for carbon taxes to help restore solvency to public institutions, until all American workers get the same taxpayer funded system of entitlements and security.

On Sunday February 2nd the Sacramento Bee released an editorial entitled “CEQA’s being hijacked, where are the enviros? ” In the editorial, the Bee states:

“With shameless abandon, lawyers and monied players are abusing the state’s premier environmental law – the California Environmental Quality Act,” and “Labor unions are an even larger abuser of CEQA. In recent years, labor groups have used environmental lawsuits, or the threat of such suits, to stop or slow down power plant construction, hospital expansions and housing developments. The unions’ lawyers always seem to disappear once a developer has signed an agreement to hire only union labor. Critics call this practice ‘greenmail,’ a polite term for legal extortion.”

The Bee is on to something, but it is the Bee and other members of the press who need to wake up just as much as “enviros.” Because all laws can be hijacked, and it is the press whose sacred trust is to speak truth to power. In its brief editorial the Bee documents several recent examples of how unions are using environmental laws to force landowners and developers to hire union labor. And the problem, as we’ve said again and again, is not the ideals of unions – it is the reality of unions using their control of state, county and municipal governments to guarantee wages and benefits to unionized public workers and contractors that are far greater than what private sector workers can earn with similar skills. Read “California’s Deficit,” or view our interactive spreadsheet “Pension Calculator” to better understand the cost of union control of government policy.

If mainstream media such as the Sacramento Bee covered this reality more often, the points we make here would have more credibility. But being a voice in the wilderness doesn’t make one wrong. Here’s what one prominent California assemblymember wrote me a few months ago:

“Public employee unions have policy influence on the state legislature that is tantamount to control. Due to the considerable resources they bring to bear… our policy decisions are absolutely influenced by public employee union interests.”

This is why public employees retire in their 50′s with pensions and health care for life – while the rest of us retire in our 60′s, if we’re lucky, hoping we’ve saved enough to get by, since social security will possibly pay our property taxes, and not much more. And since our policymakers condone millions of unskilled immigrants, legal and illegal – entering America and acquiring American entitlements year after year at the same time as menial jobs are being relentlessly automated – the average wage earning capacity of Americans continues to drop. So the bureaucrats who control the reins of government grant their unionized government workforce special entitlements that their own policies ensure will never be economically feasible to grant all American workers – whose rights, dignity, and entitlements should be exactly the same as theirs – according to their own ideals.

What does this all have to do with environmentalism? Because this latest wave of green mania that has captured the hearts and kindled the fears of millions of Americans is potentially the most abundant source of new taxes in the history of the world. Environmentalism, ironically, is a virulent form of the globalization environmentalists ordinarily decry – because the prescriptions of individual sacrifice and collective leveling of lifestyles that will satisfy what is now mainstream environmental wisdom – can only be fulfilled through global socialist tyranny. And since socialism, in essense, is communism with accomodations for ultra-rich private property owners, the agenda of socialism benefits all powerful vested interests – big environmentalist organizations, public sector unions, corporate cartels (including the “indian gaming” interests), insurance companies, trial lawyers, big government, and the super rich. The losers are small businesses, the consumer, individual liberties, and the interests of emerging nations.

If unions truly cared about workers, they would care about all workers. But instead they concentrate their power in areas where there is no global competition – the public sector, where profits don’t have to be made, and where success (eliminating social problems) is failure (since fewer government jobs are then necessary). It is in this inverted world that unions flourish, and control our destiny. Pandering to the endless and impossible demands of environmental extremists guarantees both more revenues and regulations; the currency of unions and the currency of government have become one and the same.

Where are the enviros? We are here. But mainstream media is not listening – despite an occasional flirtation with reality on the part of the Sacramento Bee, they and their media counterparts are not beating the drum nearly loud enough or often enough to be heard by voters.

Innovative business models and innovative technology are both necessary to usher in the electric age. Imagine the gigawatt-hours we’ll need just to power the commuter miles for millions of new electric cars. But along with new sources of electricity, we can increase the supply of electricity from existing sources by retrofitting our grid to the lighter and far more energy efficient touch of new “HVDC light” electricity transmission cables! This technology allows 1.0+ gigawatt transmission cables to be buried underground, without magnetic fields. These super efficient cables – that only lose about 1% of energy for every four-hundred kilometers – are far less costly than the current grid that uses – in general – 0.5 gigawatt AC transmission lines that require elevation via expensive transmission towers, with on average 30% energy loss on transmission.

Wind farms proposed for Northern Vancouver. (Image: Sea Breeze Power Inc.)

Sea Breeze Power Corp. is involved in joint ventures and directly in projects that are critical to entering the electric age. These include projects such as the Juan de Fuca cable – a 0.5 gigawatt DC cable transmitting electricity from Southern Vancouver to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the West Coast Cable, a 650 mile long, 1.6 gigawatt DC cable to lay on the seabed from the Colombia River to the San Francisco Bay.

Sea Breeze is also involved in wind power proposals, hoping to utilize the stable winds that batter the treeless highlands of northern Vancouver island. Initially 100 megawatts of capacity are proposed on about a dozen sites in northern Vancouver (see map). Sea Breeze is also participating in projects to develop “run of river” green hydroelectric turbines in southern British Colombia – ranging from 10 to 25 megawatts in output per station.

Even in northern Vancouver Island, where reliable winds from the ocean blow year-round, there is still significant daily and seasonal variation of harvestable wind power. British Colombia has an even more profound seasonal variation in the potential for run-of-river hydro-electric power, where a 24 hour capacity occurs during spring snow melt, and zero capacity ensues during late summer. But also in British Colombia there is huge existing capacity power from hydroelectric plants that utilize multi-year water storage, making load balancing easy. Whenever wind or seasonal hydroelectric power is abundant, the deep reservoir-fed hydroelectric stations can shut down another turbine. As the President of Sea Breeze, Paul Manson put it, “the size and depth of our reservoirs allows us multi-year load balancing.”

Sea Breeze Power Company is in the right place at the right time – their region has deep reservoir hydro-electric capacity, which means they can load-balance significant new sources of sporadic power – such as wind and run-of-river hydro which British Colombia has in abundance. At $.10 per kilowatt-hour, operating continuously, a 1.5 gigawatt high-voltage direct current cable from Vancouver to California would deliver 11.8 billion kilowatt-hours per year – at $.10 per kilowatt-hour that is about 1.2 billion dollars per year.

Industry costs for wind farms are about $2.5 to 3.0 million per megawatt output – for run-of-river hydroelectric it is about 3.0 to 4.0 million. A lot of this cost is for the permits, especially with the greener “run-of-river” hydroelectric plants, where surplus water is diverted into a collection pond and a pipe feeding a turbine generator. These 10-25 megawatt turbines are a significant source of electricity in British Colombia.

Having the ability to stop the turbines on the major reservoirs is British Colombia’s greatest asset as an energy exporter. ‘When you can load balance intermittant wind and runoff dependent power sources with literally gigawatt-years of water behind the dam, you don’t need new storage – you have storage. All in all, however, the biggest story here is Sea Breeze’s proposals to install high-voltage direct current (HVDC) using the latest technologies to allow Vancouver to more cost-effectively increase electricity exports. Today’s next generation “HVDC light” technology – underground high-voltage cables that have no magnetic field, deliver twice the throughput, and have far less transmission losses – represents a fundamental retrofit of our electric power grid that should be tested more.