And as we celebrate, I will guarantee you this: our old buddies the environmentalist wackos will be plotting their legal strategy to get some judge to block this, and then when there are shortages in the future and the lights go out again, the same leftists will blame the very industry they seek to obstruct here. That’s the pattern. These people announce what they’re going to do, the environmentalist wackos try to find a judge to stop this. “There you go, Rush, making wild claims again.” Oh, yeah? Well, then listen to this.
This is a press release from our old buddies at the Sierra Club. It says, for immediate release: “Sierra Club Response to Blackouts -Protect Consumers, Increase Efficiency, Decentralize Energy Supply. Washington, DC: The Sierra Club today…” and it’s dated August 15th, by the way. They didn’t waste any time getting this out, “…expressed its sympathy and concern for those citizens affected by the blackouts in the eastern U.S. and Canada. Noting that the Bush Administration and some Senators are already pushing their outdated energy policy, the Sierra Club pointed instead to workable solutions that will reduce the vulnerability of our current energy delivery system, increase the efficiency and security of our energy supply, and protect consumers in an environmentally responsible way.”
Debbie Boger, Sierra Club?s Washington Representative for Global Warming and Energy, said: “This blackout is a wake-up call that our existing system needs to be updated. There?s a better way. The best way to prevent energy bottlenecks and grid overload is to increase the efficiency of our buildings, homes, factories and appliances…” That’s bogus! We don’t “need.” In fact, do you know what percentage of capacity was being used last Thursday when this happened? Seventy-five percent is right, Mr. Winterble. A gold star for the call screener who normally doesn’t know this kind of stuff. Seventy-five percent of the capacity. We were not overloaded, not anywhere near overloaded. It wasn’t because people were using their air conditioners too much.
It wasn’t because of homes and appliances and factories and all that causing an overload! We weren’t overdoing anything – 75% capacity! By the way, Mr. Winterble knows all this stuff all the time because he is the screener. I demand screeners know everything so they can get good calls. I was only kidding. Mr. Snerdley is in there about to cry. “I can’t believe you put down the screener like you used to do to me!” I was kidding. Now, look, folks, this is important. Here comes Sierra Club and their message is, “We need more efficiency and we need to conserve.” It was 75% of the load! It wasn’t even that outrageously hot a day. Don’t fall for this crock, my friends. But that’s not all in this silly release:
“The best way to prevent energy bottlenecks and grid overload is to increase the efficiency of our buildings, homes, factories and appliances, in addition to our transmission lines. Building more power plants won’t help because we’re looking at transmission line bottlenecks. Instead, we need to decentralize America?s power sources, use more renewable energy like wind and solar power, and ensure power companies aren?t allowed to deregulate and manipulate markets. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s energy plan, developed with the energy industry, will take us backwards on all these counts.” No! You people are the ones taking us backwards. You people are the antiques. You people cannot get it straight, and wouldn’t tell people if you did. We don’t need more power plants? It won’t help because of a transmission line bottleneck? This is just poppycock. But I’m backing up a claim.
I’ve been telling you since Thursday: you draw a line. On the left side of the line, you’ve got people opposed to expansion. You’ve got people opposed to building up in order to meet our growing demand, and they want to focus on conversation. Lo and behold, this is not even a news story. I know it reads like one. It’s a press release. And, by the way, this is how most news is generated: by press release, folks. If this sounded like a news story to you it’s because this is precisely how most newspapers print their news. They get their fax machines; they look at whatever has been sent in by their buddies and they rewrite it a little bit, and in essence that’s what upi get as news.
You doubt me on this, you think this is another baseless claim? Fine, let me take you back. It wasn’t all that many years ago, maybe eight, that some food group (nobody ever heard of them) sent out a press release saying the three food groups that we’ve always used to teach our little children about food are no longer workable. This outfit set up a whole new “food pyramid.” You know, the grains and then the fruits and the vegetables and the fats and all that stuff put out by the American Medical Association.
This new group, an imaginary group of three wacko doctors, gave themselves a logo and started faxing out the release and the press just ran with it. And the AMA finally said, “We never heard of these people.” And it ended up having to be retracted. It’s how news happens. It really does. Not in all cases, of course, but Jayson Blair, for all we know, could still be writing news stories as he writes press releases for wherever he works and whoever he’s working for. It’s really – you’d be shocked. That’s why we make jokes here about which reporters are on the DNC fax list. You know, the Al Hunt column every Thursday, you can trace it to some fax at some point.
I’m not making this stuff up, folks. These are not baseless claims. By the way, according to the Energy Information Agency of the Department of Energy, in today’s market – now, listen to this, because this is important. “In today’s market, coal-fired power plants…” Coal, coal, my friends. Coal Creek miners. Think cave-ins here. “Coal-fired power plants produce just over half of the electricity used in the United States, nuclear plants 19%, natural gas plants 14%, and hydroelectric plants about 10%. The remaining 7% comes from oil-fired plants and plants using other fuels such as municipal solid waste (and you know what that is), wood, and geothermal and wind power.”
So the problem is not only transmission, as these Sierra Club ninnies try to tell us. The problem is actual production of electricity and the coal, nuclear and oil industries – all of which make available the products that create electricity – are under assault by the environmentalist wackos and the very federal regulatory behemoths some would further empower. And this is staggering: “Coal-fired power plants produce just over half of the electricity used in the United States, nuclear plants 19%, natural gas plants 14%, and hydroelectric water, dams, that kind of thing, 10%. The remaining 7% comes from oil and plants using other fuels.”
So it’s not just transmission problem. We’ve got a production and electricity challenge, which everybody knows. I mean, we’re a growing population, #1. We are a modernizing and constantly improving technologically population, and this takes energy – and there’s no sin in it, by the way, as I keep saying. Look at the industries that are under assault in this country by the environmentalists. They are the coal industry, the nuclear and oil industries, are they not? Those are the three that are under constant assault. They are the ones that contribute to our electricity. You tell me that you can’t draw a line and on the left side of it pinpoint the enemies of expansion, modernization and technological improvement? You most certainly can.
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