From GeorgeAllen.com

Front and center on his campaign website is a graphic comparing gas prices from the artificially low $1.85-per-gallon average from January 2009 (driven down by the economic meltdown) with the $3.87-per-gallon average of several weeks ago.

Throughout his campaign, Allen has promised lower energy prices, which he says can be achieved by pushing for more offshore drilling and more deregulation. The League of Conservation Voters called described him as having “one of the worst environmental records ever.”

In February, March, and April, Allen blamed the President for energy costs, complaining that “The Obama administration may not think rising gasoline and energy prices are severely straining budgets – but the families and small business owners of Virginia tell a different story.” The effort to pin rising gas prices on the President was echoed by Republicans across the country — though history consistently has shown gas prices have virtually nothing to do with any U.S. policy decision.

But according to AAA’s “Daily Fuel Gage,” the national average for a gallon of gas has dropped from $3.849 a month ago to just $3.676 today. And in Virginia, the state Allen hopes to again represent, it’s at an even-lower $3.485.

Allen has updated neither this graphic nor his rhetoric. Just yesterday, the campaign posted a comment from Allen’s wife Susan that Virginia entrepreneurs want “real change in Washington to get rid of burdensome regulations and create a real energy policy to alleviate the pain at the pump.” And a week ago, George Allen tweeted, “High cost of gasoline touches virtually every aspect of our economy. We need to unleash our American energy resources.”

When prices were going up, Allen and others on the Right, were all too happy to blame it on President Obama. Now that prices are going down, rather than give any credit to the Obama administration, they seem content to just ignore it. Allen owns between $108,009 and $370,000 in coal, oil, and other energy companies’ stock, received at least $15,000 in consulting and speaking fees from the dirty energy sector in the previous year, and was paid $20,000 for his work as chairman of the American Energy Freedom Center, a pro-dirty energy group which engages in global warming denial.

Seriously, this is a show that says things like “We used electricity for everything. Even to grown food and pump water. But after the blackout, nothing worked. Not even car engines or jet turbines. Hell, even batteries. All of it. Gone forever.” Except that absent some mysterious magical thing or scientific nonsense Abrams and Eric Kripke, his co-creator dream up for introduction at some point, electricity doesn’t have an on-off switch: it’s generated by many different methods. Messing with the grid that distributes electricity is not the same thing as removing our capacity to ever generate and distribute more of is. We don’t use electricity to make airplanes stay up, we use jet fuel—20.2 billion gallons of it annually as of 2009. And while hybrid electric cars are on the market, those too rely on internal combustion engines, which in turn are powered by fossil fuels.

I’m fully aware, of course, that most television is based on junk science. But the reason this is particularly disappointing is that Kripke and Abrams are setting up a scenario here that undermines precisely what science fiction has the potential to do: reckon with what we’ve done to ourselves and posit solutions, be they scientific or societal. A magic shutdown scenario, rather than a situation where we’ve run out of fossil fuels, doesn’t require us to grapple with what we’ve done to ourselves—there are no contractions of services, no resource hoarding, no slow adaptation and competition between classes or nations. The blame can and probably will be placed on some sort of mysterious cabal rather than our collective inability to radically change our energy use. And the solution will be in the form of hidden knowledge possessed by an equally small and brilliant cabal, rather than major, painful, realignments in the way we live our lives and innovation that changes it. Setting up its central conceit this way, Revolution is a fantasy of an energy crisis where no one is to blame, in the same way that Tony Stark’s building-powering arc reactor (a great discussion of the relevant zoning issues is available here) is a fantasy that an alternative to fossil fuels is just around the corner.

But at least The Avengers argues that green energy innovation is sexy (as will, apparently, Marion Cotillard in The Dark Knight). That’s much more attractive than a fantasy in which an energy crisis happens to us as innocent victims, rather than an acknowledgement that we happened to the world’s energy reserves.

“Concerned about Americans’ huge carbon footprint? Then you should be concerned about immigration,” a man in the ad says in an attempt to scare viewers:

MAN: Immigrants produce four times more carbon emissions in the U.S. than their home countries. [...] Reducing immigration won’t solve global warming, but it is part of the solution.

Watch it here:

The problem? The claim that immigrants have a carbon footprint four times larger in the U.S. comes from a CIS report, which has deeply flawed methodology. The report claims that a person’s CO2 emissions is directly related to his or her personal income — so a person making $110,000 per year will emit 10 percent more carbon than a person who earns $100,000 per year under the report’s methodology. Thus, because the report claims that each Mexican immigrant earns 53.2 percent of the average U.S. resident, it claims that these immigrants must also produce 53.2 percent of the carbon emissions.

But this is simply absurd. If such a relationship actually did exist, that would mean that Mitt Romney, who earned $21.6 million in 2010 — or more than 600 times the average annual income according to the CIS report — also must have produced 600 times the CO2 emissions. That’s enough of a carbon footprint to fuel over 2,200 vehicles or power more than 1,400 homes for an entire year. Not even John McCain owns that many houses.

There’s also robust data showing that immigrants produce less carbon emissions than their native-born citizen counterparts. Brookings found in 2008 that the 10 highest carbon-emitting cities have an average immigrant population below 5 percent, while the cities with the lowest carbon footprint have an average immigrant population of 26 percent. And as CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light told ThinkProgress, even if we could suddenly remove the entire carbon impact created by immigrants, it would only decrease the U.S.’s carbon emissions by 7.32 percent in a good year. Clearly, immigrants are not to blame for the U.S.’s large climate footprint.

Rather than falsely blame immigrants for carbon emissions that have fed global warming, Americans should focus on practical solutions like better land use policies and landscape design to conserve resources. Los Angeles, which has a burgeoning second- and third-generation immigrant population, has seen its water usage decline to a 32-year low despite a population increase of 1 million people. It can be done, but using anti-immigrant sentiment to misplace blame to one section of the population distracts from what the U.S. should be doing to address global warming instead.

Sarah Glynn, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, contributed to this report.

But like many conservative attacks on the president, the war on American energy is a fiction. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, U.S. exports of fossil fuels “are soaring” and the U.S. is on pace to be “a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years”:

According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

That the U.S. is shipping out more fuel than it brings in is significant because the nation has for decades been a voracious energy consumer. It took in huge quantities of not only crude oil from the Middle East but also refined fuels from Europe, Latin America and elsewhere to help run its factories and cars. [...]

The reversal raises the prospect of the U.S. becoming a major provider of various types of energy to the rest of the world, a status that was once virtually unthinkable. The U.S. already exports vast amounts of coal, and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. are pursuing or exploring plans to liquefy newly abundant natural gas and send it overseas.

This is, of course, good news, even though much of it has to do with the faltering U.S. economy, which has driven down demand for fuel. But the new data also demonstrates the absurdity of conservative energy policy, which starts with the (baseless) assumption that domestic fossil fuel production is too low and follows that it must be incentivized with taxpayer dollars and licenses to pollute and bend labor safety rules in order to increase output.

Meanwhile, U.S. oil production is up, despite Obama’s mythical war against the industry. American drivers have seen little benefit from this, however, because prices are set in a global market, where quickly developing countries are driving up demand and thus prices. So increasing production here would have negligible impact on prices as American refineries would just ship their product abroad where it could fetch higher prices.

Economists have debunked the myth that environment regulations stall job growth again and again. Even as Mitt Romney calls to “tear down the vast edifice of regulations the Obama administration has imposed,” data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show regulations haven’t hurt the economy. In 2010, only 0.3 percent of layoffs were due to higher costs from government regulations/intervention. By comparison, lower business demand caused 25 percent of layoffs.

Past studies also confirm that regulations have virtually no impact on jobs. Richard Morgenstern’s landmark study found that over a decade of regulations on heavily polluting industries didn’t cause “a significant change” in employment:

According to the study, when jobs were lost, they were often made up elsewhere in the same industry. For every $1 million companies spent, as many as 11 / 2 net jobs were added to the economy.

Overall, the research shows that the GOP field’s hyperbolic calls to eliminate regulation would have minimal impact on the unemployment rate.

Presidential candidate, former Ambassador to China, and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman received attention for his willingness to accept scientists’ verdict that carbon dioxide and other pollutants generated by humans is responsible for climate change.

While 98 of 100 climate scientists agree that global warming is real, he is the only one out of nine Republican presidential candidates to say so. Nonetheless, his energy plan presented at a speech delivered on Tuesday in New Hampshire would increase global warming pollution.  The other elements of the plan increase fossil fuel production and consumption, and are based on lack of understanding about energy use and policies.

Let’s take a closer look.

Just a few short years ago, then Gov. Huntsman supported a cap and trade system to reduce the carbon dioxide pollution responsible for climate change. He even joined two other governors in ads for the Environmental Defense Fund that urge government action to reduce pollution. He noted that a program to reduce global warming would “bring new jobs and exports.” He concluded that “now it’s time for Congress to act by capping greenhouse gas pollution.”

During an October 16, 2008 gubernatorial debate, Huntsman reiterated that it was essential to put a price on carbon dioxide pollution to protect public health and the climate.

Two months ago, Huntsman vigorously rejected Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) climate science denial, and warned that this approach could harm the Republican Party.

“When we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what  the National Academy Sciences have said, about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and therefore in a losing position.”

But all of Huntsman’s proposals outlined in his recent energy plan would exacerbate the problem, not address it. For example, he supports the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Texas to refine into gasoline and sell overseas.  Tar sands production yields 14 to 25 percent more carbon dioxide pollution from “well to wheel” compared to conventional oil. Huntsman’s desire to develop these high carbon fuels while also recognizing the reality of climate change is like a doctor urging a cancer patient to increase his smoking.

In addition to support for policies that would make global warming worse, Huntsman is advocating policies that would ignore investments in new, clean technologies of the future. His case for these policies is based on so many false or misleading statistics, so we break them down in the chart below:

The Energy World According to Jon Huntsman

Gov. Huntsman distinguished himself from his competitors by accepting climate science. But the inconvenient truth is that his energy proposals vary little from those proposed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney or Texas Governor Rick Perry.

All three plans would expand the use of dirty fossil fuels while limiting investments in the deployment of renewable energy technologies and efficiency. Meanwhile, China, Germany and other economic competitors race ahead to dominate the future $2 trillion global cleantech market. It’s time for all of these candidates to stop looking at policies of the past, and create a better vision for our energy future.

— Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

by Daniel J. Weiss

It’s understandable, though indefensible, that Texas Governor Rick Perry’s energy plan is little more than Big Oil’s wish list.   What’s much more surprising is that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s energy proposal differs little from Perry’s Petroleum Pollution Plan.

Like Perry, Romney would continue our dependence on foreign oil rather than develop 21^st century vehicles that use little or no petroleum, while giving big oil $4 billion annually in big tax breaks; hee would oppose regulations for mercury, smog, and cancer causing pollutants; and he would let other nations develop the clean energy technologies of the future rather than restore America’s manufacturing might.

The Romney energy plan “Believes in Big Oil” rather than believing in American ingenuity and innovation.  It’s no surprise that Romney has received more big oil campaign cash than any other candidate for federal office, according to Open Secrets.

Romney claims that he believes that “government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry.”  Yet in an op-ed this Monday, Romney advocated ending a federal loan program to help companies develop and produce ultra-efficient cars, signed into law by President Bush.  This program has provided $9 billion in loans to five companies, and created 42,000 jobs in nine states.  CAP research identified another 13 pending loan applications for projects to build hybrid vehicles, advanced batteries, and super-efficient engines.  Nine of these projects would create another 11,000 jobs. (We could not identify job figures for the other four proposals.)

One of the companies with a pending loan application –Next Autoworks – plans to build cars that go 40 miles per gallon with a modest sticker price.  Its plant in Louisiana would create 1,400 jobs.

Meanwhile, Romney completely ignores efforts to make vehicles go much further on a gallon gas to reduce imports. The Obama administration, auto companies, the United Auto Workers, the state of California, and a variety of environmentalists reached a tentative agreement to require cars and light trucks to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.   This proposal would reduce oil use by 24 billion gallons of oil by 2030.  Romney seems oblivious to the implementation of these fuel economy standards signed into law by President George W. Bush.

(For more on Romney’s assault on clean energy jobs, see “Romney Attacks ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Jobs, Ignoring the 64,000 Green Jobs Created in His State”)

While Romney opposes investments in new technologies that reduce oil use, he supports keeping huge tax breaks for big oil companies. The Big Five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell – made $60 billion in profits in the first half of 2011 alone, after making nearly $1 trillion from 2001-2010.  Yet Romney would maintain tax breaks that provide them with $20 billion over the coming decade. And he keeps these breaks even though a recent analysis by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee found that they slashed American jobs over the past five years.

Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP combined to reduce their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that time.

Just in 2010 alone, the Big Five oil companies reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees, while making a combined $73 billion in profits.

Instead of creating American jobs, these huge oil companies have spent their profits buying back their own stock to enrich their senior executives, board members, and share-holders.  In addition, they have cash reserves of $59 billion. Yet the Congressional Research Service found that the big five oil companies invested less than five percent of their profits into research and development of advanced fuels.  In other words, Romney opposes helping companies develop new technologies that reduce foreign oil use and create jobs, while supporting billions of dollars in tax handouts to big, hugely profitable oil companies that are shedding jobs while doing nothing to invest in future clean energy technologies.

As with Perry, Romney supports “drill, baby, drill” to produce more oil by echoing big oils claim that this would create many jobs.  Both men rely on oil industry claims that the Washington Post found unsupported by facts:

But many economists say that API has exaggerated the number of jobs linked to the oil and gas industry by including direct and indirect jobs (such as steel suppliers), and a seldom-used category known as “induced” jobs that API says covers everything from valets to day-care providers, from librarians to rocket scientists.

Moreover, the single biggest category of people working directly for the petroleum industry is cashiers at gasoline stations and stations with convenience stores — 533,830 of them, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet hardly any of those cashiers pump gas, check engines or inflate tires; mostly they ring up sales of snacks, not gasoline. According to the Labor Department, their median hourly wage is a meager $8.68.

According to the BLS, the number of people in the United States drilling wells, extracting oil and gas, refining petroleum and manning gasoline stations is about 1.1 million.

Romney also promotes the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that will stretch from Canada to Texas. The pipeline would bring carbon-intensive, environmentally disastrous tar sands oil across the country to refine and sell overseas. He repeats Big Oil’s claim that the “potential from Keystone XL pipeline construction” would create an astronomical number of jobs. A Cornell University analysis found that this isn’t so:

The project will create no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years, according to TransCanada’s own data supplied to the State Department.

The Perry and Romney “drill here, drill now, drill only” plans are based on a false premise – that the Obama Administration has slowed United States’ oil production.  In fact, the Energy Information Administration reports that the U.S. imports less than half its oil for the first time in many years.  Domestic oil production is up ten percent while imports are six percent lower since 2008.  Meanwhile, domestic oil use is down two percent, with additional oil savings due to new, improved fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.  Over the next decade, the growth in U.S. domestic oil production will outpace the progression in oil demand.  And the American Petroleum Institute – big oil’s lobbying muscle – recently announced “that 6,379 oil wells were completed in third quarter 2011, a 16 percent increase from year-ago levels.”

Massachusetts receives significant amounts of air pollution from other states, and has numerous safeguards that require pollution reductions by its power plants and other industrial sources. Yet Romney joins with big oil and dirty coal to oppose the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to reduce mercury, arsenic, lead, and smog pollution from power plants, cement manufacturers, and large industrial boilers. His proposal would lead to 68,000 deaths every year. He falsely calls these rules job killers, when they are actually life savers.

Governor’s Perry and Romney have already thrown their elbows at each other during Republican presidential candidate debates.  But their energy plans are so similar that they are interchangeable.  Although he says that “government bureaucrats are bad at picking winners,” Romney and his energy plans do just that.  The winners are big oil and dirty coal companies, while the losers are Americans who want to breathe clean air and have jobs building the clean energy technologies of the future.

— Daniel J. Weiss is a senior fellow and director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress

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Rick Perry released his first paid campaign advertisement for the 2012 election in Iowa today. Talking exclusively about energy jobs, Perry grins as he explains his plan to open up every crevice in the U.S. to oil, gas and coal extraction — all while stripping the environmental protection agency of its ability to keep the environment clean.

Yes, that’s an inspirational plan all right.

Perry’s campaign doesn’t even bother throwing in an obligatory wind turbine or solar panel to show half-hearted support for an “all of the above” strategy. Nope. This is Perry’s “Drills Gone Wild” fantasy.

Amazingly, this ad is being released in Iowa, a state that gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind.

But as it turns out, both Perry and Paul have sought federal energy subsidies with gusto, as the Washington Post noted today:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) pressed the energy secretary in 2008 to approve a federal loan guarantee to help an energy company hoping to expand a nuclear facility in Texas. NRG Energy was among the many firms vying for a slice of $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees set aside for nuclear production, according to letters obtained by The Washington Post. That led to a rush of appeals from Congress members and other elected officials, including Perry and Paul, hoping to win support for their projects.

Perry and Paul both said “their earlier advocacy for a specific Texas project does not contradict their fundamental beliefs.” But for Perry at least, this is just the latest in a long line of instances where he embraced federal spending that he claimed to oppose.

For instance, he railed against the 2009 stimulus package, before using it to balance his budget. He claimed that he was against a bill meant to save teachers’ jobs, and then accepted the funding anyway. He even said he was a “vocal opponent” of No Child Left Behind, after trumpeting the money he received under the law.

Instead of energy subsidies, “Perry cites Texas’s ‘enterprise fund’ for emerging energy companies as a model.” That fund — in addition to not creating the number of jobs Perry says it has — has basically been a slush fund for him to dole out money to companies that donated to his campaigns.

Complete with orchestral music fit for a Lord of the Rings movie and supportive quotes from media pundits, Perry’s campaign attempts to spin his climate-killing energy plan into a hopeful vision for the future.

In cinema, high-budget drama doesn’t mean the director can weave a good story — or bring in good reviews from critics. Perry does neither. Here’s what others are saying about Perry’s energy plan:

“The numbers that Perry…[is] offering for job creation in the energy sector are unrealistic.” — Michael Levi, Council on Foreign Relations

“I appreciate you endorsing my energy ideas.” — Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann

“A long-standing jobs and energy proposal that resembled a wish list for the oil and gas industry…he offered no specific in the speech to support its two major claims.” — Richard Oppel, Jr, New York Times

The Perry energy plan is both scary and laughable.  Watch the hilarious video below for an alternative version of the Perry campaign’s attempt at inspiration:

Rather than crafting faux dramas with nothing but fancy visuals and a poor script, the Perry campaign might want to try comedy. They’re already there.

Related Post:

• Rick Perry’s Dirty Energy Plan: Drill More, Pollute More, Spew a Lot of Hot Air

• Drills Gone Wild: Rick Perry’s Energy Plan

Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) plans to unveil his energy plan at a speech in Pittsburgh tomorrow.  Based on his description in Manchester Union Leader and other comments, the Perry proposal bill is a Big Oil wish list masquerading as an energy plan.  It would allow so much more oil drilling on federal lands and in waters that it is “drill, baby, drill” gone wild.

By gutting health safeguards from air pollution, it is a recipe for more premature deaths and hospitalizations, with few additional jobs, and no investment in the fast growing clean tech sector. The Perry Petroleum Plan looks backwards by reviving the Bush – Cheney plan developed in secret with big oil companies rather than providing a path to cleaner, more efficient energy production and consumption — the road our economic competitors are racing on.

Perry implored during Tuesday’s presidential debate that we must “get America independent on the domestic energy side.”  He must not know the Obama Administration has already made significant progress to reduce dependence on foreign oil.  The Energy Information Administration reports that domestic oil production is up ten percent while imports are six percent lower from 2008 to 2011.  Meanwhile, domestic oil use is down two percent, with additional oil savings due to new, improved fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.  Over the next decade, the growth in U.S. domestic oil production will outpace the progression in oil demand.

Despite the increase in drilling already underway, Perry would “immediately authorize[e] the release of some federal lands and waters for energy development.”   This proposal is both unnecessary and reckless, since this new production could occur without the new safeguards the administration established for offshore oil drilling necessitated by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster last year.  Part of Perry’s plan includes “a review of all Obama-era regulations…and work to eliminate onerous rules that kill jobs with little benefit to the environment,” which would likely include these long overdue improvements.

Perry relies on oil industry statistics to make the case that more drilling means millions of more jobs.  The Washington Post recently reviewed the American Petroleum Institute’s job claims, and found them wanting.

But many economists say that the API has exaggerated the number of jobs linked to the oil and gas industry by including direct and indirect jobs (such as steel suppliers), and a seldom-used category known as “induced” jobs that API says covers everything from valets to day-care providers, from librarians to rocket scientists.

Moreover, the single biggest category of people working directly for the petroleum industry is cashiers at gasoline stations and stations with convenience stores — 533,830 of them, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet hardly any of those cashiers pump gas, check engines or inflate tires; mostly they ring up sales of snacks, not gasoline. According to the Labor Department, their median hourly wage is a meager $8.68.

According to the BLS, the number of people in the United States drilling wells, extracting oil and gas, refining petroleum and manning gasoline stations is about 1.1 million.

An analysis by the Democratic members of the House Natural Resources Committee found that Big Oil companies shed jobs over the last five years at a time of increased oil production.

Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP combined to reduce their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that time.

Just in 2010 alone, the big 5 oil companies reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees, while making a combined $73 billion in profits.

Nonetheless, Perry repeats the unsubstantiated, implausible claim that more drilling will double total employment in the oil and gas sector

Another Perry target is the Environmental Protection Agency and its reductions in air pollution responsible for smog, acid rain, and carcinogenic emissions from power plants and other sources.  Five new clean air health rules would annually prevent 68,000 premature deaths and 52,000 hospitalizations.

There is little evidence that such health standards cause job loss.  According to former Reagan, Bush, Kemp and Paul official Bruce Bartlett, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, regulations are having a lower impact on employment under the Obama Administration than they did in 2008 at the end of the Bush Administration.

In fact, clean air safeguards create jobs because companies buy and install more advanced pollution control equipment. The University of Massachusetts completed a study earlier this year that projects an increase of 1.5 million jobs due to compliance with the Cross State Air Pollution and Utility Air Toxics rules.

Perry’s attack on clean air safeguards could alienate independent and even many Republican voters.   A bipartisan poll by Hart Research (D) and GS Strategy Group (R) released on October 12 by Ceres found that three quarters of independents favor these two air pollution standards even after hearing both sides of the debate.  And nearly half of all Republicans do too.   The Republican pollster Greg Strimple of GS strategy noted that

“Although some in Congress oppose these rules, the level of support from Republican voters is surprisingly strong.  The research clearly demonstrates Republican voters are willing to support new rules to reduce harmful emissions in order to improve public health.  Republicans like clean air, too.”

In a press conference about the poll, Strimple noted the most effective issues for Republican candidates are those that divide Democrats and Independents, and unite Republican voters.  He warned that attacks on clean air rules like Perry’s assault do the opposite: they unite Democrats and independents and divide Republicans.

Texas generates more electricity from wind power than any other state.  Nonetheless, Gov. Perry’s description of his plan excludes any federal investment in such new and emerging technologies, including power from the wind, sun, tides, or earth.

The Perry Pro-Petroleum Plan would focus almost exclusively on producing more domestic oil and gas, including some from places that Americans deem worth protecting for future generations.  But his plan ignores investments in our growing clean tech sector that not only create more jobs, but also help grow the economy with more innovation, manufacturing, and other activities.  Such investments will increase exports and competitiveness in the $2 trillion annual market for clean tech.  Perry’s plan ignores this future and instead would go back to a past where big oil companies ruled while Americans suffered from their pollution.

— Daniel J. Weiss, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

While omitting the elephant in the room, Hadley effectively outlined one of the likely disastrous effects of an attack on Iran. In town for a war game organized by an advocacy group that emphasizes energy insecurity, Hadley told Fox’s Eric Bolling:

HADLEY: [I]f you think about it, most of our oil comes from states that are unstable and in the Middle East or states like Venezuela and Libya and Iran that bear is no good will.

BOLLING: Sir, I have pointed this out in the past, a scenario that could happen. They tried it in the past. Iran could close off the Strait of Hormuz, that very, very short world oil choke-point, cutting off not one or two million barrels a day but 17 million barrels a day. A very easy put them to do. What would happen to the price of oil and the American economy?

HADLEY: The price of oil would skyrocket. I am sure you would see more than 200 barrels — dollars a barrel for oil. The economy would be in severe straits. Our military will tell you that in time there will be able to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but it wouldn’t have to be closed very long to have a devastating impact on our economy and the global economy. It’s not just the United States. But the United States is particularly vulnerable because we are struggling and it is of course where we live so we care about it.

Watch the video:

Leaving aside that Canada and Mexico export vastly more oil to the U.S. than “unstable” Middle East states or enemies, Hadley and Bolling put forward a scenario where Iran decides unprovoked to close down the Strait of Hormuz. While that’s unlikely, other plausible situations exist where Iran would likely be very tempted to close down the transit point for about a quarter of the world’s oil: in retaliation for a strike. This, too, is not a certainty, but military analysts have noted the distinct possibility and the Iranian military itself has said it would react to an attack by closing the Strait.

In short, if you want to avoid “skyrocket(ing)” oil prices and “a devastating impact on our economy and the global economy” due to an Iranian closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the best way to do it would be to not attack Iran.

Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) allow users to record television programs to a storage device (hard drive, memory card, etc.).  They also use more electricity than a refrigerator! (albeit, an energy efficient one.)

The startling state of DVR efficiency was brought to light by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The report finds:

In 2010, set-top boxes in the United States consumed approximately 27 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to the annual output of nine average (500 MW) coal-fired power plants. The electricity required to operate all U.S. boxes is equal to the annual household electricity consumption of the entire state of Maryland, results in 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and costs households more than $3 billion each year.

Remarkably, “U.S. set-top boxes continue to use almost as much power when not in use as they do when in use. However, leading European service providers have begun to solve this problem in their newest boxes”:

According to NRDC, there is much that can be done to improve DVR efficiency including:

Meeting ENERGY STAR requirements
Manufacturers are strongly encouraged to design products that meet or surpass ENERGY STAR Version 4.0 requirements as soon as possible.

Employing Automatic Low-Power States
Future products should automatically enter a low power state when the user is neither watching nor recording or downloading a show, and should wake up in a sufficiently short period of time to prevent customer dissatisfaction.

Replacing Outdated and Inefficient Set-Top Boxes
Service providers should accelerate deployment of new energy-efficient set-top boxes and make any needed changes in their “upstream” equipment to ensure the energy saving features are successfully utilized. Service providers are encouraged to shift to multi-room solutions that require only one main box and employ much lower power boxes (thin clients) to view content on other televisions in the home.

Spurring Technological Innovation
Service providers should work with their supply chain and industry groups to accelerate adoption of standards that enable:

• Multi-room clients to achieve deep sleep with short wake time
• Connected consumer electronics devices such as the television, set-top box, and DVD player to share power state information in support of more effective power management
• Data connections should operate at lower power levels when not in use
• Service providers to wake set-top boxes from deep sleep

With a little commonsense and ingenuity, your favorite television program can be enjoyed anytime of the day — without burning up your money and the planet.

– Tyce Herrman

Below are the earlier comments from the Facebook commenting system:

Karen Rutherford Gardner

interesting!

June 15 at 5:32pm

sasparillafizz

Just for reference, the current consumer TiVo (Premiere) uses 26 watts of power when powered on and recording (less than 2 CFL’s) and had Energy Star compliance when it was released last year – it also does not require a set top box since it uses a cable card for cable TV access. The previous TiVo (the HD) used 36 watts of power when powered on and recording.

June 15 at 5:42pm

Neal J. King

Seems strange, in this day and age, that such inefficiency would be supported in the market. Reducing power consumption for something that big should be a win/win/win.

June 15 at 8:18pm

Jeffery Haas

Pffft, the industry runs on the same thing all of them do, narrow unenlightened selfish self interest with no regard for the needs of the consumer.

June 16 at 10:49am

me

Exactly – with no actual choice from cable service providers, the market “reveals my preference” to have an energy guzzling DVR sitting under the highly efficient LED backlit TV I deliberately chose over plasma. Go figure.

June 16 at 5:13pm

Jonathan Koomey

The real issue is market failure. The cable company buys the box but you pay the electric bill. Therefore there is no incentive for the cable company to design an efficient product, and they don’t. Of course, like for most products, there are many options for improving their efficiency in a cost effective way for society, we just need to convince/cajole/force the cable companies to do it.

June 17 at 5:00pm

j.turner70

My TV, antenna booster and DVD player are plugged into a power strip, which I switch on only when I want to watch a program. That gets rid of the standby drain.

June 16 at 12:20am

bloggcomment

Efficiency is important, but please don’t let it obscure what’s really needed, which is total energy use reduction. A very different mindset.

When I was a teenager in the 70s, nobody had a DVR, efficient, inefficient or otherwise as they didn’t exist. 0 watts consumed for DVRs then across the world. Not so in 2011.

I grew up in a hotel in the 70s, it had about 40 rooms and between all the guests in the hotel, and the two bars we had how many televisions would you think? The answer is ONE and it was in the “Television room” near the hotel lounge. We left there in 1980 but I would expect that the hotel is now likely to have FORTY televisions, one for each room. I don’t care how efficient they are, they will be using more than the one TV did in 1970.

“According to NRDC, there is much that can be done to improve DVR efficiency including:…… Replacing Outdated and Inefficient Set-Top Boxes”.

This is because basically what efficiency means is… go out and buy more consumer products. Guess what? That is what you have been doing all your adult life. It is that approach that has got us from 1 TV in a hotel to 40 TVs in a hotel with the huge increase in energy consumption and CO2 emissions as a result. The same with satellite boxes, computers, games consoles, fridge/freezers, coffee machines, power showers, electric pond fountains, electric sandwich makers, ice cream makers, broadband routers, electric shavers, juicers, kitchen extractor fans, air conditioning units, computer printers, digital camera, electric toothbrushes and on and on and on. The models in this list may well be more efficient than last year’s model, but they use a HUGE amount more than in 1970 because then we lived without almost every single one of these so the consumption and CO2 emsissions from such devices was almost… ZERO.

We love efficiency and so do the manufacturers. We can to continue with our extravagant high consumption lifestyles using cutting edge consumer products and the manufacturers get us to continually replace our old inefficient DVRs (say) with bright, shiny, new, efficient DVRs. It’s a win-win all round! Except for the planet of course where the CO generated from the plants supplying all this increased demand is filling our atmosphere. And of course, having seen all the delights of these new toys, China and India will be wanting them too. Of course they will be state of the art efficient DVRs for all those Chinese and Indian homes, and maybe only sales of 100 million units (total guess) so they will need to be efficient!

Of course, total global demand reduction is not popular. It means we need to stop buying an endless number of exciting electric things and manufacturers will have to stop making them. You can see why it’s not a popular approach!

June 16 at 5:22am

Mike twotwo

This is basically the same issue as the “how green is your IPAD II” Humans are driven to connect with each other. TV simulates that, email does it, etc. The tech we have right now is basically still the first wave–it is primitive, polluting , and ill designed–but the trend is unstoppable. People are addicted to electronics.

June 16 at 8:13am

Mike twotwo

What would you say to a consumer/manufacturer model where, all the energy use in manufacturing, transport and use is clean/cheap/renewable, products are thin on resources and designed as +99% recyclable into new product (not post consumer bricks), manufacturing facilities are zero discharge and good places to work.

June 16 at 8:20am

Mike twotwo

and an energy use model similar to the 2000 watt society’s program, and a land use model based on permaculture principals?
(sorry for the multiple comments, but this Facebook Comment Plugin box I am typing in is a joke–won’t allow more than three lines)
–Mike#22

June 16 at 8:27am

Tyler Silva

also in the 70′s they didnt have microscopic surgery, just because you got along fine in the 70′s without it doesnt mean its not a good idea.

June 19 at 2:49pm

bloggcomment

Tyler: With all due respect, we’re talking about energy consumption here, no microsurgery! The point I’m making is not that it was better or worse that we didn’t have those things in the 70s and that we do now, but that having them now means an incredible increase in energy consumption with corresponding CO2 emissions resulting in the situation which Joe posts about daily.

Mike: People are addicted to a lot of things these days (there’s a study there!) but I personally don’t believe that just because the world can’t seem to get enough electronic gee-gaws that therefore that demand MUST be satisfied no matter what the consequences. You say that “the tech we have now is the first wave”. Why the first? Didn’t morse code count? Telegraph? Short wave radio? Why is this the first? If, for the sake of argument, we assume that you are right, I would posit that if we continue in this fashion it will be the last wave as well! The planet cannot continue to provide us with BOTH a liveable climate and an endless torrent of consumer stuff.

I think the idea of manufacturing where all energy is renewable and 99% recyclable is a chimera to keep us all on our current consumption addiction. “In the old days” things were made to last, not to be recycled, although of course all goods should be designed with maximum recyclability in mind at the end of their useful life. The problem is with the whole IDEA of a buy it, use it, bin it attitude that we have towards everything at the moment. The idea of a totally renewable energy society which can provide air, train, motor and boat travel, global food and clothing production, endless consumer products and suitable lifestyles for every one of the Earth’s 7 billion (and rising) people at our level of resource use is a total fantasy. We need to get off this line of thinking and behaviour as quickly as possible.

And as a friend of mine said, “The best things in life aren’t things”.

June 21 at 5:29am

Tyler Silva

The only reason your hotel did not have a TV in every room is because TVs were so expensive. It is not the fact that we have too many TVs it is the fact that efficiency does not usually equal profits for a company so where is the incentive for companies to make green products. Now you have decades of bad regulation and bad manufacturing policies that lead to our energy consumption.

June 21 at 11:19am

bloggcomment

Tyler: I would agree that the expense of a TV in the 70s would have made 40 TVs prohibitive, but … why didn’t we have, say, 5 in our most swanky rooms? I suggest that it was because people were not obsessed with the availability of TVs everywhere. Now we expect TVs in banks, ships, department stores, waiting rooms, petrol stations and more. And that’s in the UK!

You think we don’t have too many TVs!! I would disagree strongly. If in 1970, one TV was enough to keep our guests happy (my Mum and Dad never told me of guests complaining about not having a TV in their room and they were managing the hotel) then why does it require 40 TVs now? Neither my brother nor I, and none of my friends, ever felt aggrieved at not having a TV in our bedroom – we watched the one in the lounge. Unless your parents were very wealthy children didn’t have TVs in their rooms. Nowadays, I imagine that there would riots in most homes if even the 5 year olds didn’t have their own TV in their bedroom, probably connected up to an electricity powered game console too – which we never had back in the 70s either … so we’d better add that into the grid demand too.

It stands to reason surely, that this huge increase in electricity consuming devices over the last 40 years has not caused a decrease or even a stable demand for electricity and hence CO2. There is always a price to pay for our consumption and it’s not just what you pay in the shop. Yet.

June 28 at 5:04am

Jeffery Haas

The typical set top HD-DVR is a lot like the old automobile that had no seat belts, no dual system brakes, no smart fuel management system, no catalytic converter and no air bags.
The industry claimed that it would be impossible to add these features because the cost of doing so would destroy the car business.
Expect the same protests from the satellite and cable industry and expect the cost to be passed to the consumer.

June 16 at 10:48am

me

According to the report an HD-DVR set-top box combo consumes 446 kWh of electricity a year. I pay 17 cents a kWh. That works out to $75.82 a year – just for the electricity!

June 16 at 11:08am

Diana Cook

we had a new dvr and it sucked-so went back to the old type-at least it works. They will not have these old ones for long tho-so when this one goes out-we are stuck-

June 16 at 11:13am

Jodi Lewis Becker

ughhhh

June 16 at 11:54am

Mark David Oliver

Yup – I unplug mine whenever it isn’t in use.

June 16 at 12:14pm

Eli Herman

Holy crap that’s a lot of energy wasted.

June 16 at 12:29pm

Dave Dombrosky

Looks like the cable companies should take some hints from Netflix and move to a streaming-on-demand model. Or alternatively, figure out how to make the DVR power on and off automatically when it needs to record shows. Only issue with this is the bootup time of the DVR, but this could be improved greatly with the technology that exists today.

June 16 at 1:01pm

Ed McQuade

The newer Motorola 7232 that FiOS uses consumes a lot less electricity that previous DVRs. The decreased power consumption was one of the main features that Verizon requested from Motorola for the unit.

June 16 at 1:08pm

Justin Dodson

I leave mine on 24-7…..oh boy…..

June 16 at 2:57pm

Paul Kozak

Wait… TP??

June 18 at 3:33am

Richard Oliva

Wow!

June 16 at 1:02pm

David Metzger

Solar-Powered Plane Arrives in Paris.
The Swiss Solar Impulse arrives in Le Bourget for the Paris Air Show, where its makers say it marks a new stage in aviation. http://www.newslook.com/vi​deos/323038-solar-powered-​plane-arrives-in-paris?aut​oplay=true

June 16 at 2:39pm

Barbara Schwanke

Wow, I did not know this. Good thing I turn everything off before I leave.

June 16 at 3:02pm

Jennifer Stark Simons

hmmmmm…who knew?

June 16 at 5:32pm

Donnie Kepley

Maybe I missed it, but what if you just turn it off during the times you’re not watching TV? We keep ours off during the day and turn it off again before retiring for the evening.

June 17 at 7:16am

Pamela Thinesen

Oh, geez, another thing to feel guilty about…

June 16 at 7:30pm

Daphne Hatch

Well at least our DVR is an Energy Star model and only 1 year old, but I didn’t realize what energy hogs they could be.

June 16 at 10:17pm

Ken McCormick

I think it’s indolence on the part of manufacturers and on our part – The buying public, for accepting it.

I measured the current going to a friend’s TV, DVD player and VCR. With everything off, the power strip was still drawing 13 watts.

Products can be high performance, consume less power and still be cheap, (e.g. portables, phones, travel alarms etc…). Too many appliances that run on line current still consume too much, while in their quiescent/off state, to justify keeping them plugged in. That’s where the engineers are cheaping out, at a cost to us all and to the environment.

June 16 at 10:21pm

Diego Matter

To find ALL your standby losses you absolutely need a whole house power meter.
A simple power meter will not find fixed connected electrical users but is a good start.

As an example:
———————
In our house the total standby usage if everything is off but connected would be:
540 Watt continuous, that is 12.6kWh/day or 4594kWh/year or $1,162 AUS/year only for standby – or 4.7 tonnes of CO2/year.

Because we turn everything off when not in use our standby use is only:
17.2 Watt continuous,, 0.52kWh/day or 192kWh/year or $48.43 AUS/year – or 0.2 tonnes of CO2/year.

That’s a savings factor of 24:1!

The biggest standby users are.
Air Condition I 1774 kWh/year!
Air Condition II 158 kWh/year.
Two Fans with remote 307 kWh/year!
Stereo 788 kWh/year!
Television and receiver (no DVR) 289 kWh/year.

As you can see it is worth paying attention to standby losses!

Start making a change and buy a whole house power meter or start with a more simple power meter when you can’t afford the latter.

Be meticulous and measure everything with a system in mind:
————————–​————————–​———————
Make a list.
Turn all electrical users off – everything!
Turn every breaker on the breaker panel off. The reading on the power meter should show zero.
Then test with the first breaker on, make a note, then turn it off again. If you have a high reading then you have big standby users on this circuit -> what is connected?
Continue with circuit two and so on.

It takes sometimes quite a bit of ingenuity to find out what happens and which on is the culprit, but it is absolutely worth it!

Our electricity use is now 1907 kWh/year for two persons with all the amenities modern life has to offer.

The next steps will be replacing the halogen spots with LED spots and installing a 1.5kWp solar system. A 3kWp system would even provide the ‘fuel’ for an electric car. That’s what I call the power of sun! No wonder established circles fear this transition to a new future. No more oil companies, no more utilities with big earnings, only simple freedom.

Good luck for your journey!

June 17 at 9:25am

Marianne McHann

not even aware of energy (and money) we are wasting.

June 17 at 11:45am

David Henderson

This is amazing! Glad we got rid of ours! And I am enjoying more than $100 per month saved in going to basic cable!

June 17 at 7:59pm

Nitish Kannan

well based on Moore’s law its possible today to build and there are DVR devices, with SSD drives and ARM base processors which would consume 1/1000 power of a DVR and cheaper than existing ones, product cycles are key people get one DVR and never a new one so all DVR’s today rely on 5 year old technology, I run www.techdimwit.com and am in the field so I completely understand why its inefficient. your Iphone is 1000 times more computation than a DVR and uses less power and has almost the same Hard Disk Capacity.

June 17 at 8:09pm

Ronald Turck

We are in for all of the solutions. For us a matter of economy; we cannot afford to waste money like that.

June 19 at 7:41am

BethandJack Wallace

HAPPY FATHERS DAY PAPA ♥

June 19 at 12:17pm

Yoram Getzler

If you got one, reconsider…

June 20 at 11:19am

BROUN: I want to make this clear. I will not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless we have major cuts in the size and scope of the federal government.

MULTIPLE CONSTITUENTS: Can you define major?

BROUN: I propose getting rid of the Department of Education. I’d like to get rid of the Department of Energy as well.

Watch it:

The U.S. has already hit its debt limit, but the Treasury Department is taking extraordinary steps to stave off default until early August. So Broun is demanding these departments be abolished within the span of less than three months. At the same town hall, Broun defended his vote to preserve subsidies for big oil companies, saying that while he believes we should “stop all subsidies,” the special tax breaks and expenditures for oil companies don’t really qualify as subsidies.

At a town hall held this past Monday posted on Youtube, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) came face to face with his constituents’ anger over these special favors for the oil industry. At one point, a man who was shocked that Cravaack was advocating for privatizing Medicare to reduce the deficit asked him why the congressman continues to support wasteful spending like offering subsidies for Big Oil.

Cravaack began a rambling response where he dodged the question and started advocating for increased domestic oil drilling. While he did this, constituents interjected to demand to know why Congress continues to subsidize oil companies. Eventually, the congressman simply denied that they even existed:

CONSTITUENT: I understand we have to balance the budget. But why are you starting to balance the budget for the lowest working class? [...] What about oil companies? [inaudible] billion you gave them last quarter. Are you going to vote to take their subsidy away?
(audience applauses)

CRAVAACK: Let’s talk about the big, I know I get hit by this a lot, Big Oil. Making big profits, right? The reason why Big Oil is making big profits is because we’re paying big money at the pump. That’s why they’re making profits –

CONSTITUENT: No, it’s because you’re subsidising them!

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: We are, of course paying –

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: Why are you changing the subject?!

ANOTHER CONSTITUENT: How much do we subsidize them?!

CRAVAACK: Well, they have a lower tax rate, and they’re not really subsidized.

Watch it:

At another point, Cravaack said that we need more drilling here in the United States. While this did draw some applause from the audience, one constituent retorted, “It worked in the Gulf of Mexico!” Watch it:

Actually, the oil industry gets nearly $7 billion a year in subsidies, which are made up of a variety of special tax breaks and tax expenditures. Additionally, there is little evidence that additional domestic drilling in the United States would lower prices in the near-term.

The measure would deem the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, located in New Orleans, the “exclusive venue” for all civil suits dealing with energy projects in the Gulf. That’s a problem because the court is stocked with judges who have financial holdings or other ties to the oil and gas industry. That means lawsuits would be relegated to a particularly sympathetic court, no matter what jurisdiction the company is based in or where the incident that prompted the suit occurred.

I feel protected and safe already.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) came face to face with this growing movement at a town hall in Vancouver, Washington last night. Dozens of protesters encamped outside the meeting, waving signs like “Save Medicare: Tax the Rich.” When she tried to defend her vote on the GOP budget that would effectively privatize Medicare, “a chorus of boos and catcalls and shouts of ‘liar’ erupted in the auditorium.” The congresswoman was repeatedly called out by what the local press called a “rough crowd.”

Yet at one point — perhaps understanding that her constituents were already upset with her enough — she did endorse a position that put her on the opposite side of most of her House GOP colleagues. She told the audience that she favored ending subsidies to oil companies like Exxon and BP:

Herrera Beutler did not directly address why she has supported making the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. But she said she does favor taking a hard look at military spending and supports ending subsidies for big corporations like Exxon and BP.

Of course, Beutler voted, along with the rest of the House GOP caucus, to protect billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil more than once in the past few months.

Her flip-flop may be evidence that American anger at Big Oil is forcing hesitant conservatives to switch sides. A number of GOP congressmen have told constituents in recent days that they now oppose the subsidies. These include Reps. Joe Walsh (IL), Tom McClintock (CA), and Dan Webster (FL).