One of our esteemed readers made some very interesting points in a recent email - the latest in an ongoing dialogue we have about alt. energy and the various roadblocks our country keeps building in front of it. We’re reposting some of the more interesting tidbits here, with links for context.

“The administration is finally using the oil crisis to press for his clean energy program. The link there is obvious, and I only wish he had started to do so sooner. However, questions have been raised about how much the spill will hurt the President’s ability to achieve his agenda, even on energy, which is ironic because you’d think that, in a sane world, a crisis like this would actually HELP push an energy bill through Congress. People have started making comparisons to Carter and the Iran Hostage Crisis, which is a bit unnerving.”

He continues:

“Even without the lost political capital, NPR has an article that I think raises issues about whether or not the U.S. will be ready to accept investment in alternative energy under any circumstances. They note that even as the oil spill ruins Louisiana’s coastline and fishing industry, residents may not be willing to back limits on offshore drilling because oil is such an important part of the state’s economy. Which is why Louisiana’s Senators push to keep the cap on damages, even as oil seeps onto their state’s beaches. It reminds me of the argument that Kevin Phillips made in American Theocracy: Superpowers rise, in part, because of their ability to create and adapt to new and innovative sources of energy. However, over time, the people and institutions devoted to that source of energy become overly powerful and entrenched. As such, the super power’s ability to change to a new, “better” source of energy is inhibited, and they are overtaken by another, more flexible nation that is able to utilize that new technology.”

It’s a weird country we live in, folks. Seriously though, a lot of brilliant stuff was said here. If anyone else out there has anything to add, leave a comment or shoot an email to kiefda03 -at- gmail -dot- com.

Lots of manly car chat in this update, but first here’s an amusing hater from Townhall.com - it’s clear from his directionless rant about cap and trade (and Obama, and unions, and all the usual GOP scapegoats) that David Harsanyi doesn’t really understand what he’s angry about. Not that it’s impossible to rationally oppose wind and solar power, but he clearly has no grasp of them beyond their convenience as buzzwords. Guys like this would get in the way if they weren’t so retarded.

Among actual adults, however, there’s a lot to talk about. Arizona’s electric car enthusiasts are soon to benefit from a $99.8 million stimulus-act grant that will help local company Ecotality Inc. roll out 12,000 charging stations and show people how to use them once the Nissan Leaf hits the streets later on this year. Whether or not Mexican residents will be allowed to drive them remains to be seen.

The Leaf won’t be the only option with a sissy name, though. Norwegian electric car maker THINK is $40 million closer to expanding operations to North America, and has plans to start production at its U.S. plant in Elkhart, Indiana next year. THINK cars are currently assembled in Finland. We didn’t get retail prices from THINK, but they’re probably (and hopefully) less than the current $50,000 tag on Toyota’s first hydrogen car. Not exactly the best way to deflate criticism that hydrogen car research is too expensive, but Toyota reps are insistent that “production cost should be covered within the price of the vehicle.” At least they understand that they have to cut that price in half before making any serious pushes to sell these things in America - we have enough reasons to hate rich people already without their cars getting fancier.

And with that, we must dash, but it’s good to see electric cars and similar tech. gaining momentum despite laughable resistance from guys like Harsanyi. Seriously, “three-cornered-hat-wearing Visigoths?” What a tool.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved, in a controversial decision, plans for the Cape Wind project, an offshore wind farm near Cape Cod. The project has been stalled for something like nine years, so this decision is being hailed as truly groundbreaking, possibly because no one in the media feels comfortable calling it windbreaking.

In any case, opposition to Cape Wind was varied - people were concerned about the turbines’ effect on tourism, fishing, aviation, harm to local marine life, and disturbance of Wampanoag Indian ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. The Cape Wind project has since been altered to preserve the integrity of Nantucket Sound, and Salazar says his approval is tied into Cape Wind conducting “additional marine archaeological surveys and…other steps to reduce the project’s visual impact.”

Still, the project’s 130 turbines could produce “enough wind power to handle three-quarters of the electric needs of the Cape and Islands,” which they estimate as “equivalent to that of a medium-sized coal-fired power plant.” The project will also create 1,000 new construction jobs and significantly reduce carbon emissions in the area. None of this is stopping people like Scott Brown, who claimed to support wind energy, from bitching and threatening to litigate Cape Wind back into nonexistence, but their NIMBYism has stood in the way of progress long enough. Here’s hoping the Cape Wind project goes right on ahead!

Obama’s “White House to Main Street” tour is taking him to ethanol plants in Iowa and Missouri this week, hoping to drum up support for his $862 billion economic stimulus program and the now-gridlocked energy and climate legislation in the Senate. He told an Iowa Siemens AG wind-turbine plant that a greener economy “generates good jobs right here in America.” He’s really pushing the jobs aspect of his energy platform, in part because the job market still sucks pond water and in part because he wants to avoid being called a hippie by assholes like Lindsey Graham.

He’ll be saying much the same thing at POET Biorefining in Macon, Missouri, although he’ll be encountering opposition there: The Missouri Republican Party is joining forces with the Macon County Patriots for a protest down the road from the plant. We’re guessing they’re angrier at his economic policies than his environmental ones, but Tea Party events (the MCP are teabaggers and the Missouri GOP might as well be) are pretty much an incoherent mush of angry platitudes, so who really knows what they’re specifically mad at this week.

Obama pissed us off by okaying offshore drilling - which might very well turn hilarious when Republican oil states bitch about their coastlines and try to overturn it - and his newfound “hardline” stance against Republicans on one or two issues is meaningless when he caves on five or six. And with cellulosic ethanol’s future uncertain, now would be the time for him to drum up support for it, and other green energy sources. He’s right about there being no “silver bullet,” even though we think he meant magic bullet, but he needs to back those words up with something, and soon.

According to the Environmental Law Institute, energy subsidies are “black, not green.” Approximately $72 billion in fossil fuel subsidies was handed out over ELI’s seven-year study period; renewable fuels only got $29 billion. Half of the renewable subsidies went to corn ethanol production, interestingly enough, but that’s still only $15 billion or so compared to $72 billion for fossil fuels, despite overwhelming evidence that we need to cut our dependence on it for environmental and geopolitical reasons.

Little wonder, then, that ethanol plants keep losing money and shutting down. Articles like New American’s “The Ethanol Fiasco” miss the point because, clearly, the government hasn’t really invested much of anything in renewable fuels yet. But then again, pro-oil shills missed the point for most of 2009, and will continue missing it as long as they dismiss renewables out of hand without noticing how other countries - Brazil, China, India - are capitalizing on them.

But let’s not get too glum, here: Click the Car for an article about the Eco-Smart Zeta ethanol fireplace (which we wrote about last April) that’ll keep you warm during the record cold fronts sweeping the country right now.

Short update today, but a worthwhile one: the New York Times has an interesting and sobering article (free registration required) on America’s sluggish green energy development. While some geothermal and wind stuff is being done, overall progress is lagging behind Europe, China, and India (as we all know), and it’s reaching the point where mud hut-dwelling peasants in the ass end of nowhere are going to beat us to a workable green energy program.

Part of the problem is money - banks aren’t lending to alt-energy projects, and existing companies don’t want to invest in new equipment before relevant legislation kicks in. And part of the problem lies at the feet of contentious fartbags like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who still doesn’t believe that greenhouse gases hurt anything and calls any regulations on them “onerous” and based on “manipulated data.” What will convince him of something that’s already demonstrably true is a mystery. And unfortunately, his fellow Republicans aren’t much more reasonable - their tendency towards anti-everything political hypochondria is just clouding the issue.

The Apollo Alliance’s Cathy Calfo puts it best; “As a country, we need to make a decision that we do or don’t want to be a leader in this area.” Right now, it’s looking like we don’t. And that’s going to cost us dearly in the future. Hell, it already is in the present.

But to cheer us all up, Click the Car for an article about Denmark’s electric car ambitions.

Well, the global warming bill has been approved by the Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but the New York Times doesn’t take that as a sign that the bill itself is going anywhere. Their reasoning, as quoted by the Charleston Gazette, is that “rising joblessness has amplified attacks from critics who deride [President] Obama’s energy policy as a big-government ‘cap and tax’ plan.” In other words, the Democrats are once again hobbled by baseless criticism from the peanut gallery. The bewildering resistance to this bill is explained further, and perhaps better, by the Center for Public Integrity’s Stalemate In Copenhagen project, which shines a light on “fossil fuel industries and other heavy carbon emitters” who’ve been trying to gum up the works. Coal is a big one here, as evidenced by Don Blankenship’s Appalachian Friends of America rallies, where attendees listen to country music and “learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs.”

And even if that wasn’t an issue, actual debate on global warming legislation probably won’t start until next year anyway; according to Sen. John Rockefeller, “some people are talking about not doing it until after the 2010 election.” Sounds like what a lot of them tell their wives, actually.

In times like these, there’s only one thing most citizens who aren’t lobbyists and therefore still count as human beings can do: nag the hell out of your representatives’ office staff. Find out who to write/call at USA.gov and get to work! We did elect them to represent us, after all - maybe they need to be reminded of that.

Well, while Democrats try to force the global warming bill through the Senate and Republicans threaten to kill it in committee with a boycott, F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 12th annual conference is being held in Paris this week. Countries like the United States, Brazil, India, France, and Nigeria are being represented and sharing their views on global ethanol development. One of our representatives, Renewable Fuels Association CEO/President Bob Dinneen,  will look at “expanding ethanol markets and addressing unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of ethanol.” So at least SOMEONE can address the topic like an adult.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get Barbara Boxer and George Voinovich interrupting each other over a retarded semantics disagreement and conservative pundits smearing anyone who speaks up about the issue as a fanatic hippie moonbat. And that’s not even counting the Midwestern contingent who can’t debate this issue for more than ten seconds without tripping over their own dicks trying to monopolize it for political points.

Anyway, now that we’ve thoroughly bummed ourselves out, we’re gonna stop here and hope for the best. But we need something to cheer us up. Some hot chicks posing next to an electric car should do it.

Here are some quick links to explore while we whip up a more substantial post. Their contradictory nature is part of the reason that opinions on ethanol are so sharply divided and steeped in misinformation.
Ethanol blamed for hobbling Baltimore police car fleet

Baltimore Sun - Ethanol supplier responds to accusations

Oh, but wait - it gets better.
Carmakers fight higher gas/ethanol blend

But wait! Carmakers really LOVE ethanol and it’s all a ploy to waste tax money!

Luckily, there is some good news on the horizon:

Poet gets funding increase for cellulosic ethanol plant

So there ya go! Happy reading, and we’ll have something with more meat (or soy) to it later on this week!

We’re still working on that list of ways to break ethanol into the marketplace, but we stumbled across some more political cartoons that we felt like sharing because, well, they’re retarded. By which we mean, they’ve been taken over by petty conservatives whose grasp of the issues is about as cartoonish as their output. For example: