Believing themselves to be smarter than the average bear, bureaucrats in the Obama administration continue their quest to create a, well, bear market — at least for oil. The White House decided to designate more than 200,000 square miles of Alaskan land and coastline as “critical habitat” for polar bears — the same bear population that has reached greater numbers than previously recorded in history. In fact, despite what Al Gore and his fellow global warmists would have us believe, the population has actually risen by 40 percent since 1974.

This new non-endangered species habitat is enormous enough to qualify as the third largest state in the union, placing it between Texas and California in terms of square miles. Former UnitedHealth general counsel and now Assistant Interior Secretary Tom Strickland claimed at a news conference that the greatest threat to the bear is Arctic ice melt and that “we will continue to work to protect the polar bear and its fragile environment.”

However, the new designation as a critical habitat is the first step in requiring even more government consideration of the supposed negative effect on the escalating polar bear numbers before allowing oil and gas development. The state of Alaska responded by filing a complaint in an effort to stop the listing under the Endangered Species Act.

In the meantime, some 30 percent of the world’s gas supplies and 4 percent of the estimated global oil supply will be placed off limits because of this deceitful claim that the polar bear population is endangered. Next up, the loggerhead turtle, which, if listed as endangered, would bring regulations on everything along the eastern seaboard, including what lights you can put on the ocean-facing side of your house.

Here are some more reasons:

• CNSNews.com – Interior Secretary Wants Probe of Bush …

Obama Administration Blocking Domestic Oil Leases

Posted by nationalforestlawblog at 09:06 PM on October 08, 2009

Like it or not we live in a global economy.  If the Obama administration enacts policies that make it too expensive to manufacture products in the United States, those products will be made in other countries and shipped here.

Numerous studies have documented how the grossly misnamed Affordable Energy Act of 2009, also known as Cap and Trade or more accurately Cap and Tax, will raise the cost of energy for every American.  If the cost of all energy rises dramatically, will industrial production stay in this country or will it move to China or India that is not constrained by the cost of energy regulations?  China and India already enjoy a significant cost advantage over American producers in many fields; this will just exacerbate that advantage.

While the US taxpayers are paying to support the preservation of United Auto Workers jobs, with outlandish pay and benefit costs, at GM and Chrysler, the same administration is willing to drive industrial production overseas.  Perhaps this is why the administration is also supporting Card Check legislation that will allow easy unionization of millions of workers in the service industries.  It knows that its other policies will destroy millions of well paying industrial jobs in this country.  Based upon the Spanish government’s experiences with subsidizing alternative energy sources through higher conventional energy prices, Cap and Tax will destroy 2 million jobs per year in this country.

For such a damaging plan to be seriously considered there must be a group that benefits from its passage.  Just as Joseph Kennedy benefited handsomely from FDR’s programs in the 1930’s, it turns out that some of main benefactors of this program are also politically very well connected.

In 2004, Al Gore, former Vice President and author of Inconvenient Truth, started Generational Investment Management (GIM) to provide funding to businesses associated with alternative energy.   GIM also happens to own 10% of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which will issue the carbon credits that Cap and Tax legislation is based upon.

In 2007, Al Gore became a partner in the venture capital firm of Kleiman, Perkins, Claufield and Byers (KPCB).  This firm is heavily invested in renewable energy and electrical grid improvements.  The market for their products is almost completely dependent on government programs in the form of subsidies, tax breaks or regulation.  Al Gore’s contribution to KPCB is to promote government intervention into the energy markets.

It is not surprising that venture capital firms and investment firms that will have a stake in the trading of carbon credits, have made extensive campaign contributions to those legislators proposing Cap and Trade legislation.  Clearly, the American public looses in the form of higher energy costs and lost jobs however, a few politically well connected individuals will have much to gain as the result of further government regulation of energy consumption.

David Nace is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

God created all sorts of energy resources, only a few of which have been developed and utilized to drive our economy.  Energy is the life blood of freedom and it is what allows our economy to produce individual wealth for all Americans.  And, this is why energy, in all forms, is so very important to the average working American.  Cheap inexpensive oil is what results in the costs of everything to go down to reasonable affordable levels for us all.  When energy is inexpensive it is also an incentive for Americans to start new small businesses, because then it is easier to make a good profit, and therefore lower energy costs results in hundreds of thousands of new jobs and allows for significant increases in money available for wages on the shop floor or out in the field.

Energy prices, like prices for everything, are determined by the principles of supply and demand.  The more supply of energy the United States has available to meet the demand of our large and small businesses and individual needs and desires the less it costs.  That is why we the American people have so much power to lower the cost of our energy and make ourselves individually more wealthy.

The fact is that there are HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of barrels of oil and vast volumes of natural gas available DOMESTICALLY right here in and around America.  In addition America has vast resources in coal energy.  Combining the unfathomable quantities of these resources with new developing energy sources would immensely improve all of our families’ economic conditions.  The Liberty Tree Lantern is astonished at how little the mainstream media is reporting all of the new and existing volumes of domestic energy available for us.  We also find it interesting how little it is reported that the Obama Administration is standing in the way of releasing the leases necessary to drill and harvest these vast resources that would so greatly improve our economy and restore the prosperity of individual citizens.

What we need to do as Americans is to get together and with one Tea Party like voice demand that Obama and his Secretary of The Interior release the leases that our Oil companies need to drill for oil out west on federal lands and offshore all around our country and Alaska so that we can build up America and strengthen our freedom through massive infusions of domestic energy.

The Liberty Tree Lantern is happy to provide just one story, of dozens of available, regarding domestic American energy just waiting for the Obama Administration to let us produce the energy we so desperately need to lower our costs of everything.   Please send a personal message to Congress via, paper, e-mail and phone that you want Obama to release the drilling leases immediately.  Tell them to DRILL  HERE AND DRILL NOW!  (Do you know that Obama is stealing American taxpayer money to “give” to Brazil for ‘them’ to drill for oil offshore?  See:  U.S. Taxpayers to Provide Financing To Brazil for “Their” Offshore Drilling)

When you write or talk to your Congressman, make sure that you mention that the LAST thing we need are taxes on energy that will increase costs on every single thing the American family needs to live and businesses need to create well paying jobs.  Reject Cap-n-TAX in any form, folks, because such taxes will set our entire country back by decades destroy jobs, wealth, savings and create poverty.

The Liberty Tree Lantern has a few questions for our readers to ponder: 

1. Why, after the people of America demanded that the ban on offshore and western Federal Lands expire, which it did some months ago now, has the Obama Administration withheld exploration leases and not allowed oil companies to go where they know the domestic oil likely is for exploration and harvest? 
2. Why is the Obama Administration keeping America from our own domestic energy instead of depending on and importing energy from other countries?
3. Why doesn’t the majority of mainstream media report on the Billions of Barrels of crude oil available in Western Federal Lands and offshore when this energy would obviously improve the lives of so many Americans?
4. America is in a horrible recession RIGHT NOW that could OBVIOUSLY be greatly remedied by dramatically increasing that availability of our own massive volumes of domestic energy, doesn’t the Obama Administration care about the average individual American who is out of work and quickly running out of money due to job loss and increased prices on utility bills, gasoline, food and just about everything else?

The U.S. House of Representatives may vote this Friday on the “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” (the Waxman-Markey bill).  We need the many voices of the Partnership for America’s Energy Security to write and call your legislators, urging them to oppose this harmful and misguided legislation.

Addressing climate change is an important issue, and the U.S. oil and natural gas industry has made substantial commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The industry supports balanced legislation to reduce greenhouse gases and replace the patchwork of state and federal regulatory programs, but the Waxman-Markey bill is not the answer.  This hastily drafted legislation would:

• Significantly increase consumer and business costs for gasoline and other fuels;
• Hurt American refiners—costing U.S. jobs and impeding our nation’s ability to produce energy domestically;
• Discourage domestic development of clean-burning natural gas.

We ask that you take two immediate actions:

• Call your U.S. Representative and urge him or her to vote “NO” on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act
  Just call 877-354-7783 toll free, enter your PIN—10456—listen to the brief instructions, and you will be patched through to your U.S. Representative’s office automatically.
• Send an email to your U.S. Representative urging him or her to vote “NO” on the Waxman-Markey bill
  Visit the Partnership website to send an email.  It takes just a few minutes to participate.

Our nation needs sensible energy policies that meet economic and environmental needs—without giving advantages to foreign competitors or costing U.S. jobs. Unfortunately, the Waxman-Markey bill will cause new problems without solving our nation’s energy needs.

Remember—your voice is a vital part of our nation’s discussion about energy. Please take action on this issue today. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Bill Rozett
Executive Director
Partnership for America’s Energy Security

Folks,

  There Is No Atmospheric Green House Effect 

More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

Scientists Denounce AP For Hysterical Global Warming Article

31,478 American Scientists Sign Petition to reject Global Warming: http://www.petitionproject.org/

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Very Serious and Important Research on Global Warming by Mankind

Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered

MORE GLOBAL COOLING AHEAD, STUDY SAYS

Democrats Plan to Maneuver Around GOP on Healthcare and Cap-and-Trade

Global Warming Cap-and-Trade Will Destroy More of Our Economy

Salazar orders BLM to reject bids on 77 Utah leases

Obama Climate Czarina Was Member of Socialist Group’s Environmental Commission

WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING!   YOU ONLY HAVE A FEW HOURS TO ACT!  If you don’t act, it is your own personal individual fault that this happens; And, you will have NO RIGHT to complain that you are starving or losing your financial future, your way of life and, very well perhaps your home. This bill will push our country over the edge, if YOU do not personally and individually act, NOW…  The U.S. Government is using this “emergency” that doesn’t even exist, as an excuse to steal our freedom, liberty and money, to control and manipulate each and every one of us and businesses through usurpation, oppression and despotism by way of fear of something that doesn’t even exist…   Most of them know Global Warming, caused by mankind, doesn’t exist, but they are power hungry for your money and your compliance to their will and bidding.  This is a call to arms.    - - Capt. Karl

ACTION NEEDED

threat to our nation’s economy and energy security.  The Administration is proposing at least $400 billion in new taxes and fees on the oil and natural gas industry, which would result in:

Raising taxes in a time of economic decline is a recipe for disaster.  Public policy should spur job growth, not hurt businesses and consumers.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Take Action Today!

Thank you to all of the Partnership members who have already contacted their legislators about this important issue.  If you haven’t had a chance to take action, there is still time!

Let your Members of Congress know that you oppose tax and fee hikes on the oil and natural gas industry.

Please take the following two actions:

It’s critical that we add our voices
to the debate—before it’s too late!

Now that begs the question why?  There are VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers = Super Tankers) at anchor around the world storing billions of barrels of crude.  Crude oil land storage facilities around the world are bulging at the seams with crude.  So why are the prices on energy going up?

The reason is because the American people have stopped DEMANDING that the U.S. Congress and the Administration allow leases for drilling and exploration to go ahead out west, like in Utah, or offshore.  Secretary of the Interior Salazar has stopped leases.  It takes almost a decade for new sources of oil and natural gas to be found, harvested and structures created to be brought to market.  This means that the HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of barrels of oil and massive volumes of natural gas will not be available for mankind after the collapse of “The Matrix” and the combination Civil / Re-Revolutionary War in 100% support and enforced compliance of every single word and original intent of The Constitution by the U.S. Government, when these resources will be sorely needed due to the massive ensuing growth of the U.S. economy and individual wealth from the rebirth of “true” freedom in victory over the dark forces of Socialism / Communism and Global Fascism being planned for us by The Federal Reserve company’s private exclusive club of megalomaniacs called The Trilateral Commission. 

The increased costs, resultant from individual Americans asleep at the switch and not compelling our Government to proceed to develop our own God given domestic energy resources will cause more cash reversals for all American families resulting in additional usurpation of the power of individual “free” American people by our enemies and despots of all branches of the U.S. Government who are trying to rob us of money, power and liberty all the while trying to convince us with puppy dog eyes that they are trying to help us.

The U.S. Government breaks our financial legs, gives us a Socialist / Communist crutch of dependency, and then has the gull to state; “See, without us you wouldn’t even be able to walk”.

People who are not “in the know” think that the reason for the price of crude to go down to as low as $35.00 per barrel is solely the result of the international economy.  While that does have an impact on the price of crude, the fact is that when the American public screamed and demanded the U.S. Congress open our lands out west and offshore to exploration and drilling, where there are HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of barrels of God given energy just waiting for our use and economic growth, and Congress blinked and let the ban on exploration to expire, THIS IS WHAT CAUSED THE PRICE OF CRUDE, gasoline, diesel, clothing, milk, groceries and other products TO GO DOWN to an affordable level.  But now Mr. Ken Salazar is not allowing the leases to go forward to the oil companies to develop the energy we will need in the future.  Without these future resources heat, light and electricity for our homes will be too expensive for us to bear.  The markets price product on expectations of the future.  This purposeful obliteration of our own domestic future energy resources is causing these prices to increase again, even after our successful battle with the U.S. Congress to Drill, Baby, Drill!  These usurpers and tyrants are now going behind our backs and effectively rescinding our orders.  We must INDIVIDUALLY get back on the phone, mail and e-mail to force our bastard “servants”  to obey our will before they completely destroy us and our economy through massive gasoline costs at the pump, on our utility and grocery bills, AGAIN!

The so called “new” technologies are going to be far too expensive to be economically viable for at least five decades minimum.  To force these costs down the throats of economically devastated Americans is patently immoral!  But, perhaps this is a good thing!  This will help the Americans who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil about the U.S. Government to wake up in THE COLD.  This is a very good thing because starvation and freezing helps stimulate the minds of foolish men and women who think that The Constitution is either a joke or, worse, a “living document” that can be altered anyway the elitists in Congress or the Administration want to.  It is going to be good to see those so foolish amongst us learn.  It is a shame, however, that those of us who realize that the U.S. Congress and the Administration is the problem and the enemy of freedom and individual prosperity are going to drag us down with them, until enough of us read, study and learn the true meaning of liberty and the facts of world history of these matters.

When we march on Washington, I say Salazar is the first to visit the closest Liberty Tree!  For energy is the life blood of freedom!

The Liberty Tree Lantern would suggest that all who understand what the Administration and the U.S. Congress are trying to do to us by increasing the price of oil and gas, by dramatically diminishing future supplies from exploration,  should write and call their representatives and redouble our efforts to allow for drilling and exploration of our vast domestic oil and gas resources.  Don’t wait until it is too late, like when gasoline is over $4.00 per gallon again.  Can you afford it?

Look what the hell our U.S. Government is doing to us, our economy and our pocket books again.  We have to do something about this!  Write and call your representative before they kill us off financially!  We need this oil to keep prices low!  Lower is better to save us, our jobs, our money and our American Dream!

- Capt. Karl

Nick Snow
Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 5 — US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar directed the Bureau of Land Management on Feb. 4 not to accept $6 million in successful bids on 77 tracts offered in BLM’s Dec. 18 oil and gas lease sale in Utah.

“The 77 parcels that the Bush administration offered on the doorsteps of some of our national icons raised several troubling questions. I have directed the BLM not to accept the bids. We will take time to review the processes behind their inclusion in the lease sale,” he told reporters in a teleconference.

Salazar indicated that he does not expect his decision to be legally challenged. “The government contract is not formally completed until the BLM accepts the bids, which has not happened in this case,” he said. Payments for the winning bids on the 77 parcels will be returned and leasing will proceed on the 39 remaining tracts from the sale, he added.

The decision was the secretary’s second action involving a BLM oil and gas lease sale in less than a week. He ordered the DOI agency on Feb. 2 to remove eight tracts from a Feb. 3 lease sale after Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal expressed concerns about them (OGJ Online, Feb. 4, 2009). The offering of 137 remaining parcels went ahead as scheduled, raising nearly $2.4 million from the sale of leasing rights and from rental fees on 112 parcels.

Salazar did not rule out some of the 77 Utah tracts ultimately being leased. “I don’t necessarily believe that all of them won’t go into oil and gas development sometime in the future. I do believe that the proximity of Arches National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine-Mile Canyon raised serious questions about the planning process that was used,” he said.

But he stopped short of saying that the resource management plans which Utah’s BLM office completed prior to the December lease sale could be overturned. “We’ll look at them as we get our feet better planted on the ground,” he said.

Additional actions likely
Salazar also suggested that further actions could be forthcoming. “At this point, we are looking at many of the Bush administration decisions. Some of them are probably going to be good decisions. Others we will disagree with. There were a number of decisions that were made without going through the proper environmental reviews and using sound sciences to develop them. We are reviewing all of those and expect to have additional announcements in the days and weeks ahead,” he said.

Environmental organizations applauded Salazar’s move. “Today’s announcement signals a new era in the way our natural resources are managed,” said Sierra Club Deputy Director Bruce Hamilton. “The Obama administration clearly understands that instead of allowing the oil industry to destroy places like Arches National Park, we should be investing in the kind of clean energy solutions that curb global warming and leave our natural treasures intact.”

Stephen Bloch, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Salt Lake City, called the secretary’s action “a critical first step in bringing balance back to public lands management in Utah’s remarkable red-rock country. This decision rescues the stunning landscapes of Desolation Canyon and the White River from the ravages of oil and gas development.”

Oil and gas trade association officials had the opposite reaction. “The decision runs counter to President Barack Obama’s stated goal of reducing US reliance on foreign energy sources and is at odds with the judgment of most Americans that the nation should develop more of its own oil and natural gas,” said American Petroleum Institute Pres. Jack N. Gerard. “With US domestic oil production declining, we need to develop more and keep more jobs and economic activity in this country,” he added.

Kathleen Sgamma, government affairs director for the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States in Denver, said, “At a time when the Utah legislature has contemplated cutting a day from the school year to address the budget shortfall, the state is losing income from its share of the lease sale, not to mention royalty and other tax revenue from forfeited production. With this decision, our government is denying access to American energy that belongs to all Americans and making it even more difficult to increase energy security and tackle climate change.”

By Isaac MacMillen

America needs more and better sources of energy. That’s not up for discussion. But what a firestorm has erupted over what those sources should be!

Despite public opinion (e.g. with prices down, support for offshore drilling remains high—at 68%), America’s energy solutions continue to be dictated and repressed by Hard Left environmentalist groups—and they are increasingly turning to the courts to enforce their liberal, anti-energy agenda.

A quick look at available energy sources tells a sad tale:

• Coal? In Utah, the permit for a coal-burning plant was blocked by the EPA for CO emission reasons. This halts the construction of new coal power plants. Using similar environmentalist reasoning, a judge in Georgia blocked another coal plant earlier this year. Even clean-coal plants are feeling the pressure, with 8 plants forced to cancel construction in 2007 because of regulation-driven costs or uncertainties.

• Natural gas? A natural gas pipeline in Long Island was blocked for environmental reasons. And the fate of a gas pipeline in Colorado remains uncertain.

• Drilling? We have the oil. But as Shell found out last year, courts can step in and prevent exploration. Of course, given the strength of envirolobby supporters in Congress, Shell—and other oil companies—will have to consider the courts the least of their worries. The lifting of the offshore drilling moratorium may be short-lived. New, advanced methods of extracting oil may be doomed by environmental regulation. And the oceans of oil and gas in the continental United States will continue to be neglected.

• Nuclear? Regulations have made this—the safest of all power options—economically impractical. Too bad, as it has already helped France achieve virtually complete energy independence. But apparently France’s near-pristine safety record doesn’t move their hard-core dogmatists. A quick glance at the safety precautions in place show that most fears of nuclear disaster (accidental or deliberate) are misplaced, as the threat is extremely remote.

• Wind and solar power? The same liberals who have opposed offshore drilling because of its supposed aesthetic impact—will they be silent as huge wind and solar farms are built across beautiful plains and rugged desert? (Wait—looks like they’ve already spoken up—as when Robert Kennedy, Jr., put his own aesthetic wants above his neighbors’ energy needs.)

Environmental radicals have even used the courts for measures as extreme as forcing the U.S. Navy to cease a vital sonar drill because of potential environmental impact, despite a paucity of proof or a scintilla of evidence. (Fortunately, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling.)

How well is the Left’s judicial activism working? The environmental legal group Beverage and Diamond stated:

“By way of these lawsuits, the courts are to some extent shaping climate change policy while state regulatory agencies act more slowly.”

Donnell Van Noppen III, the president of Earthjustice, a group affiliated with the liberal Sierra Club, stated:

“People who support us are the ones who really believe that the use of the courts is crucial. It’s been really proven true in the last few years that the courts are essential because we’ve had a Congress and a White House really wanting to go in quite an anti-environmental direction, and the courts have been the backstop.”

The damage the courts are doing to American energy policy is staggering. As a tool of the liberal envirolobby, they have wreaked havoc on America’s energy policies, turning solutions into problems, including the Supreme Court classifying carbon dioxide a pollutant regulable under the Clean Air Act. But that should come as no surprise to those who have followed their antics throughout the years.

The zeal that radical environmentalists have shown to saving the planet—even at the cost of human life—will ultimately prove fruitless. While they may preserve the planet, what is the point if no one is left to enjoy it? It’s no wonder that they are forced to rely on an oligarchy of black robed judges to proceed with their plans.

If courts continue dictating court-ordered environmental policy, American businesses may eventually find themselves in the same situation as a UK power plant, which was vandalized by environmental activists to the tune of nearly $75,000. But when it brought the crooks to court, the vandalism was ruled “justified” in light of the “greater threat” of global warming.

Businesses need to know, for the long-term, what the rules are going to be. At present, these rules change so often that it is impossible for the businesses to be confident that the investment they make today will not be pillaged tomorrow.

So, it’s true: America needs more and better sources of energy. But right now, even more, it needs to stop the courts from doing the bidding of the radical envirolobby before its wholly contrived firestorm leaves energy independence in ashes.

Isaac MacMillen is a contributing editor of ALG News Bureau.