Opinion

Look at what really cuts Out carbon

As most of the country suffers under record-breaking temperatures, the “I told you so” crowd screams for even greater efforts to rein in our carbon emissions. What the green lobby hasn’t been so quick to broadcast is that the United States is actually leading the world in reducing our carbon footprint.

In the first quarter of the year, the International Energy Agency reports that US carbon-dioxide emissions totaled 1.34 billion tons, down 7.8 percent from the year before. The latest Environmental Protection Agency data show that our CO2 emissions in 2010 were 6.6 percent below the 2005 level.

The drop has stemmed from the recession, but also increased use of natural gas instead of higher-emission fuels. Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute reports that in the first four months of this year, electricity produced from coal was down 21 percent, while power from natural gas rose 34 percent.

As surging supplies pushed gas prices to decade lows, utilities ramped up purchases. Since gas is cleaner than coal or oil, emissions fell.

A study out from Lawrence Cathies at Cornell University concludes that using substituting natural gas for coal and oil in generating electricity may be almost half as effective in reducing emissions as substituting wind or sun power. And gas is much, much cheaper.

This is good news — but not news the green lobby wants you to know. It thrives on scary projections of rising oceans and global famine. And, on hot weather.

In recent (more temperate) years, Americans concluded that global warming is not as important as putting food on the table. Enthusiasm for President Obama’s expensive green agenda waned, dampened by embarrassing miscues like the bankruptcies of Solyndra and Beacon Power as well as reports that key researchers fiddled with the facts on climate change.

Yet the push for alternative energy has proceeded apace, draining government coffers and injecting into our sodden economy higher electricity costs and other expenses that are slowing growth.

Some 29 states have already adopted binding green-energy targets, driving up their electricity costs by 32 percent, according to Bryce. In states that once relied on cheap coal, mandated changes pushed electricity prices up 54 percent.

The drive for high-cost alternative energy threatens to hobble our manufacturers and businesses at a time when they are in the fight of their lives. Nothing today could be more important than reviving our global competitiveness and output.

Even the most carbon-obsessed European countries know they need to grow out of their debt overhangs, and are increasingly rejecting the high subsidies demanded of renewable energy. In Spain — which Obama has held up as a model — soaring budget deficits and unemployment recently prompted the government to cancel its high-cost solar and wind program. It turned out that for every “green” job created in that country, 2.2 other jobs were lost.

With unemployment above 8 percent, we shouldn’t burden our economy by subsidizing high-cost alternative energy — especially when we have almost unlimited supplies of cheap natural gas available.

Every “green” initiative — those ugly solar panels dangling from utility poles in New Jersey, proposed windmills that will ruin Nantucket Sound, the high-speed train to nowhere in California — should have to meet tough-minded cost-benefit targets.

Everyone wants clean air and water; the argument is how best to achieve these goals while encouraging needed growth. Some windmills and solar projects make sense; many don’t. The rush to renewables should be tempered by common sense.

Most important, we should encourage the economic and environmental windfall we’re enjoying from cheap natural gas.

Liz Peek is a columnist for The Fiscal Times.com and for FoxNews.com.