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Cheap Energy & America’s Red State Growth Corridors

America’s New ‘Ruhrgebiet’



Energy, manufacturing and agriculture are playing a major role in the corridor states’ revival. The resurgence of fossil fuel–based energy, notably shale oil and natural gas, is especially important. Cheap U.S. natural gas has some envisioning the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge as an “American Ruhr.” Much of this growth, notes Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, will be financed by German and other European firms that are reeling from electricity costs now three times higher than in places like Louisiana. --Joel Kotkin, The Wall Street Journal, 26 February 2013
California is weighing how to avoid a looming electricity crisis that could be brought on by its growing reliance on wind and solar power. At Tuesday’s meeting, experts cautioned that the state could begin seeing problems with reliability as soon as 2015. --Rebecca Smith, The Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2013 It was supposed to be the next big thing. California built decades of broad-based prosperity from the Gold Rush, then Hollywood, then aerospace, and later Silicon Valley. At the turn of the century, “green jobs” were supposed to be the wave of the future. How is that going for them? According to the best numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 2,500 green jobs have been created in California since 2010. Conn Carroll, The Washington Examiner, 27 February 2013

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As U.S. oil and natural gas production booms, the Obama administration’s energy policy has been “fluid” by necessity to adapt to the huge economic opportunities and climate challenges posed by growth, the top White House energy and climate adviser said on Wednesday. In a speech to a room packed with energy analysts and lobbyists, Obama adviser Heather Zichal acknowledged that U.S. energy policy “might not look perfectly pretty from the outside” as it evolves to shifting supply-and-demand scenarios. --Roberta Rampton, Reuters, 28 February 2013 The former chancellor Lord Lawson has urged the Government to keep Britain’s coal-fired power stations working for as long as was needed to avoid any short-term power shortages. In a House of Lords debate on energy policy and electricity generation Lord Lawson also called on ministers to give “every encouragement it can” to the quickest possible development of shale gas supplies. Lord Lawson urged energy and climate change minister Baroness Verma to assure the House that “if the need arises our coal-fired power stations will be kept open as long as is necessary, regardless of the European combustion plants directive”. --The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 27 February 2013 George Osborne spent an hour in front of the 1922 this evening. 40 Tory MPs took the opportunity to promote their own Budget ideas to him. A big theme was the cost of living with three MPs including Rob Halfon pushing the Chancellor on fuel duty. Interestingly, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee Andrew Tyrie argued that the Budget should reduce the cost of energy by scrapping various green levies. I’m told Osborne was extremely receptive to this idea. --James Forsyth, The Spectator, 27 February 2013 Seventeen years of continuous surveys covering countries around the world show that people not only do not care about climate change today – understandably prioritising economic misery – they also did not care about climate change even back when times were good. The new information comes in a study released by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago – a large, long-standing and respected non-profit. The NORC spokespersons said that decades of climate alarmism have had basically no effect on people's attitude around the world. –- Lewis Page, The Register, 27 February 2013


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Guest Column Dr. Benny Peiser -- Bio and Archives

Items of notes and interest from the web.


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