Lots of Uglies

            A blog reader just took me to task for calling windmills ugly. She proceeded to list her own "uglies," including strip mining, fracking, critics of President Obama, power companies, and industries that don't clean up their messes.

            Fine. She is entitled to her own opinion, as am I. But she should be careful to get her facts straight before firing broadsides in every direction. And she should concede that there are valid arguments on both sides.
            Take coal, for instance. Sure, strip mining does scar the landscape, and coal-fired plants do emit CO2 into the atmosphere. But coal presently accounts for almost half of our electricity production, compared to 0.9% for wind and 0.1 % for solar. Clearly, renewable energy sources are not about to replace fossil fuels anytime soon. Yet, this has not stopped our president from wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on failures like Solyndra, Beacon, Ener1 and Abound, while waging war on the coal industry with regulations that make it prohibitively expensive to build new power plants or upgrade old ones.
            Is this a just war? Let's ask the million people who would lose their jobs as a result of an Obama victory. And how will we all feel when Obama's prediction that "costs of electricity will necessarily skyrocket under my administration" becomes a reality?
            The president's war on fossil fuels extends to oil as well. The only way to reduce the price of gas at the pump is to reduce our reliance on imports from OPEC. Yet, this administration has done everything to prevent an increase in our domestic production. When he boasts that domestic production is higher today than at any time since 2003, he is mouthing a clever lie. The fact is that today's production level is not based on anything he has done, but on decisions made before he became president and by private companies, not the government.       

            Further, the assertion by my critic that "more oil and drilling has taken place on federal land than in any previous time" is flat out wrong. The fact is that fossil fuel production on federal lands recently hit its lowest point in nine years. How did the administration do it? 1) By cancelling oil and gas leases in Utah, the western Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic coast; 2) by delaying exploration off the coast of Alaska and keeping onshore areas off limits; 3) by erecting more regulatory hurdles to onshore oil and gas production; and 4) by pursuing climate change lawsuits that have prevented oil and gas exploration in places like Montana.

            One final point on those bad guys, the oil companies. My critic seems to have a problem with oil companies making a profit. OK, let's pick on Exxon Mobil for starters. In the five years prior to 2010 It earned  $40.5 billion domestically.. But it paid $59 billion in total U.S. taxes. That's $1.45 in taxes for every dollar in profits. Worse, in 2010 its tax bill was three times larger than its domestic profits. The administration should be deliriously grateful for such a generous contribution.
           The oil industry as a whole has an effective tax rate of 41.1% compared to 26.5% for other manufacturers. Still Obama must be calling that not paying a fair share, because his latest budget would raise another $85 billion in new taxes on oil companies over the next decade.
           There arre ways to solve our energy crisis other than by destroying a vital industry like coal or killing the golden oil goose. I don't have room here to discuss natural gas and fourth generation nulear plants, both of which hold great promise for the long term. But first we should stop the vilification of fossil fuels and release OPEC's strangle hold by accessing the vast resources we have in the ground and off our shores.