In looking through my political links over the weekend, I came across this press release from the Maryland Democrat Party. They’d like everyone to turn off the a/c and unplug their unneeded appliances and such for an hour on Saturday. Of course, the forecast for the Salisbury area is for a high of 90 degrees. (Never mind you may spend another hour resetting your clocks and such.)
I have no issue with the energy conservation part, but their idea is to interrupt life just to prove a point. My electric bill that I just got was $97.70, based on 672 kWh of usage. Thus, even if I pulled my meter for the hour, my savings is just 20.3 cents, and I save a whopping 0.93 kWh.
But, as the Maryland Democrats note, their idea of the real issue is:
By raising awareness and contributing to the solution we will also help your Maryland Democratic leaders in Congress as they push Energy Independence Legislation this Summer to combat global warming, reduce energy costs, create new innovation-based jobs, and strengthen our national security while protecting the planet. (Emphasis in orginal.)
First of all, IF global warming (uh, wait, the new buzzword is climate change – that covers all situations) is created by mankind, I wonder what the Democrats are going to do about the Chinese building a new coal-fired electrical plant each week while we haven’t built an oil refinery in 30 years.
As many of my loyal readers know, one reason I part with Congressman Gilchrest is his insistence on not taking advantage of oil sources we have within our borders, particularly in ANWR and in the Gulf of Mexico. Not only would a domestic source reduce energy costs to a degree (because of the shorter transport distances), it would also allow us to not depend on the grace of dictators and thugs like the Saudi royal family and Hugo Chavez for a good share of our oil. (However, one dirty little secret the Democrats don’t let out is that our two largest foreign oil sources are Canada and Mexico. In fact, Mexico is drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, as is Cuba.)
And then we have politicians of both parties pointing to ethanol as a fuel source contributing to energy independence. But there are two problems with ethanol – one is the net negative BTU’s that producing a gallon of ethanol creates (in other words, BTU’s used in production and transport outweigh the BTU’s created by the gallon of ethanol) and the other is that, by using corn that also serves as feed for both humans and livestock, the commodity’s price has doubled in the last year and the increase now reflects in higher prices at the grocery store. Priced a gallon of milk lately? It’s costing more to feed the cows – or the chickens the Eastern Shore economy depends on for that matter. Here’s an interesting take on the economic aspects of ethanol.
Personally, I think the best thing Maryland Democrats can do is quit harping on these so-called “clean” energy sources and allow us to use some dirty ones for awhile longer. The incentive should be created by the market, not by fiat.
By the way, that same electrical bill I looked at for the information above also has the mandated disclosure regarding the energy sources Delmarva Power uses to create the electricity we use. For calendar year 2006, we got 54% of our electricity from coal and 33.5% from nuclear sources, while natural gas created just 4.9% and “renewable sources” 3.8% (plus the purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates, which accounted for another 3.5%.) Oil made up the last 0.3%. Frankly I’m surprised at the amount of nuclear power used but I have no issue with that otherwise.
I guess noontime Saturday will be a good time to fire up my charcoal grill – after all, some Democrat out there thinks they’re reducing their contribution to global warming so I’ll take advantage.
