Environmental Equity

It’s not enough that everyone benefits. Everyone has to benefit by exactly the same amount.

From The Babbling Beaver, an MIT focused satire site: MIT environmental scientists despair over inability to prevent windmill racism

Unsurprisingly, these woke MIT ’scientists’ have little imagination, and less literary knowledge.

The solution is found in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.

Applied to this new social justice outrage, it would simply require forcing the oppressors to install pollution generators in their houses, and add small bypass valves in their cars to leak exhaust fumes into the cabin. If they have an EV, make them carry a small, lit coal burner. That coal thing is a good equity idea anyway, until we get more nukes.

On the other hand, we’ll need to have speakers placed in the homes in ‘communities of color’ to make the sound of wind turbines, and quite a few pigeons (however many it takes to be equivalent to the Bald Eagles, Condors, etc. which fly into windmills) will have to be put into blenders in the ‘disadvantaged communities.’

Then everyone will be more equal.

Implicit in the actual article is an increased cost for electricity. The pollution discrepancy might persist no matter what, but at least we can raise the price for everyone. Then we can complain about electricity affordability for the poor. The MIT gurus didn’t mention this, it’s one of those Bastiat* ‘unseens.’

*Dead, white male. Son of a successful capitalist. Member of the French National Assembly… I.e., a prominent oppressor.

Citizens for Enervating Michigan’s Economy II

There are a few lobbyists styling themselves “Citizens for Energizing Michigan’s Economy” who are hammering the radio with political ads criticizing legislators who support expanding energy choice. CEME is, in fact, dependent for funding upon Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy. These guys have been around for awhile, so their pedigree is clear:

Touting A ‘Looming Energy Shortfall,’ Utility-Connected Nonprofit Spent $7.4 Million Last Year (2015)

The $4-Million Push To Influence Michigan Energy Law (2015)

Utilities spend $1.6M to influence Michigan energy policy debate (2015)

Michigan Big Energy firms working together to steer legislation to fatten their profit statements (2015)

Consumers Energy confirms affiliated PAC donated to Rep. Gary Glenn’s election opponent (2018)

Consumers Energy contributed $43.5 million over four years to Citizens for Energizing Michigan’s Economy (2018)

Utilities-backed dark money group sparking energy debate in Michigan This article describes ““Citizens for Michigan’s Energy Future,” which is just another front for the same lobbyists. (2015)

One of the current ads claims that opposing energy company plans is the same as “outsourcing Michigan jobs” in the utility industry. Well, it might be true that there would be fewer Michigan utility jobs. However, job creation should not be a utility company’s prime objective. They should reliably deliver electricity at reasonable rates. Which means no featherbedding.

Besides that, they don’t tell you they are in favor of outsourcing electricity generation in order to help meet Michigan’s ill-advised* renewable energy goals; This Michigan Utility Is Planning Your Energy Future: “[Consumers Energy] expects to rely heavily on electricity from out-of-state generators by 2040.” Lots of Michigan’s energy is planned to be purchased from other states, while Consumers’ own solar arrays will cover “between 25,000 to 35,000 acres by 2040.”

They neglect to mention that they lobby furiously to eliminate energy supplier choice (now capped at 10%), dramatically increasing costs for public schools. See also; Consumers Energy-funded group running ads against electric choice/deregulation

TOC mentioned “Citizens for Energizing Michigan’s Economy” in 2014, when they were last found trying to increase your electricity costs by opposing consumer choice in electricity supply. They ran deceptive advertising then. They are doing it again.

Lobbyists have a First Amendment right to petition the government. I think you should have a balanced view of their agenda, and who these “citizens” are working for.

According to Consumers Energy’s spokesperson Katie Carey, “Our contributions to Citizens for Energizing Michigan’s Economy came from the company’s general funds and were not reflected in utility customer rates.” Well, since money is fungible – and could have been used to reduce rates, or pay dividends – I’m skeptical.

*Oh, by the way, here’s how windmill power worked out for Ontario: Ontario Wind Turbines

Dear Consumers Energy,

Why asking me for $1.50 per month to help you build more windmills is ridiculous:

A new study from Utah State University found that, as of 2013, Michigan’s renewable energy mandate, enacted in 2008, has cost families and businesses here a bundle: $15.1 billion overall, or $3,830 per family, compared to what we would have experienced without the mandate.

According to the study, the economies of all states with a renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, have suffered harm. Among the negative effects are a nearly 14 percent decrease in industrial electricity sales, plus losses in both personal income and employment. A key finding was that an estimated 24,369 jobs have been lost in Michigan because of the mandate, which is in effect a mandate for wind energy.

And, just for a bit of juxtapositioning on the “science is settled” front this morning:
MASSIVE GLOBAL COOLING process discovered as Paris climate deal looms

Update: 5:54PM
More unsettling science – WELL RATS: OCEANS NOT DYING AFTER ALL

NO on Proposal 3.

Michigan voters are faced with 6 ballot proposals in the November election.
Proposal 1: Referendum on the Emergency Manager Law
Proposal 2: The ‘Protect Our Jobs’ Amendment
Proposal 3: ’25 x 25′ Renewable Energy Standard
Proposal 4: The Unionization of Home-Based Caregivers
Proposal 5: The Two-Thirds Majority Tax Limitation
Proposal 6: The International Bridge/Tunnel Voting Requirement

I will have something to say on each of these. I start with Prop 3, because I have serendipitously found some dots related to it. These dots connect themselves.

Germany’s wind power chaos should be a warning to the UK

Because renewable energy must by law have priority in supplying the grid, the owners of conventional power stations, finding they have to run plants unprofitably, are so angry that they are threatening to close many of them down. The government response, astonishingly, has been to propose a new law forcing them to continue running their plants at a loss.

No one is allowed to “go Galt” in Germany. A warning to the UK, certainly, and to Michigan: The Projected Economic Impact of Proposal 3 and Michigan’s Renewable Energy Standard

Unfortunately, wind-power fits perfectly with the president’s plans for redistributing wealth and ensuring “…Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket”.

As it happened, the president couldn’t get Cap and Trade passed. Instead, he loosed the dogs of regulation at the EPA.

Without cheap and effective energy storage, wind-power will never fill more than a niche. It may increase greenhouse gases by forcing the real power plants to run at idling speeds. Wind-power dependency will reduce the reliability of the grid.

Proponents must necessarily purport to know precisely the best alternative energy technology 13 years from now. This is spectacularly risible, given the result of their taxpayer funded bets on the ethanol and battery corporatists. A Constitutional amendment to enforce such a fever dream vision is incredibly stupid.

Proposal 3 is a very bad idea. I am voting NO.

Taxation in spite of representation

FERC YOU!
From the Wall Street Journal (requires registration):
The Midwest Wind Surtax

You’d think poor Michigan has enough economic troubles without the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission placing a $300 million to $500 million annual surtax on the state’s electric utility bills. But on December 16 FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff announced new rules that would essentially socialize the cost of transmission lines across 13 states in the Midwest…

Let’s be very clear on what’s happening here: Mr. Wellinghoff and FERC are trying to establish by regulatory fiat a national energy policy that Congress has refused to endorse. Last summer Congress rejected the Obama Administration’s renewable energy standard law because it would have inflated power costs. So the fiefdom at FERC is unilaterally moving ahead to require that industries and homeowners pay a surtax on their utility bills for a nonexistent renewable energy policy. This is similar to the EPA’s initiatives to regulate carbon even after Congress rejected cap and trade.

Because Iowa and the Dakotas want to build windmills, you (and taxpayers in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin) are going to pay to build new power lines to distribute the intermittent windmill electricity. This should become known as the “Dumb Grid.”

Without billions of dollars in new power line infrastructure, the windmills are uneconomic. However, like the health care individual mandate, I’m sure we will hear a defense of this based on the Commerce Clause: Michiganders must pay for windmill transmission lines they neither need nor want, because not to do so is a restraint of interstate commerce.

Imminently-former-Governor Granholm’s desire to manufacture windmills now moves from merely stupid to surreal. You are subsidizing the manufacture of windmills so they may be sold to people who have just arranged to tax you in order to enable distribution of electricity from the windmills. That electricity will charge the batteries Ms Granholm has also subsidized, in cars the Feds have forced you to pay for, built by a company whose union you were made to bail-out. All with no law being passed.

FERC may, justifiably, have assumed Michigan would be happy to cough up half a billion annually to subsidize other States’ crackpot energy schemes. “Green” – the hue of Frankenstein’s monster – “jobs.”

Fred Upton, call your office. And don’t return to this state unless you spike this taxation by the unelected of people they do not represent.