Today we conclude our five-part series on cap-and-trade. And we do so by looking at the political gamesmanship that went into writing this bill.

Want to know how insincere the authors of this bill were? Insincere enough that they wrote in key exceptions, usually timed to coince with elections:

“Consider also that electoral politics are practically written into the bill. The first year of cap and trade would be the presidential election year of 2012, when emissions would be limited to 97 percent of 2005 levels. So, not overly draconian while Barack Obama faces re-election.

“Democrats have also actually scheduled emissions increases in 2014, just in time for mid-term elections, and in 2016. Clearly, they are trying to limit cap and trade’s effect on the next few elections.”

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2009/07/02/wingfielded0702.html

My question is: if cap-and-trade is such a great answer to global warming, then why don’t these Washington lawmakers have the courage of their convictions and implement these regulations even during election cycles?

Of course, that question answers itself.

The sooner we get past cap-and-trade and get onto alternative energy like biomass, solar and wind, the better off we will all be.

How ironic that our government is considering cap-and-trade legislation at a time of economic difficulty. Yesterday, I wrote about the harm cap-and-trade could do to consumers through higher costs. Today, I want to talk about the harm it could do to our national economy by damaging our trade relationships with other countries.

Martin Feldstein was President Reagan’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. He also happens to believe that the scientific evidence suggests global warming is true. Yet he opposes cap-and-trade as the solution. Why? Because it will harm free trade. Here’s why. Different countries will issue different permits that cost different amounts. As a result, Feldstein warnes:

“A cap-and-trade system can cause serious risks to international trade. Even if every country has a cap-and-trade system and all aim at the same relative reduction in national CO2 emissions, the resulting permit prices will differ because of national differences in initial CO2 levels and in domestic production characteristics. Because the price of the CO2 permits in a country is reflected in the prices of its products, the cap-and-trade system affects its international competitiveness.”
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/martin-feldstein-cap-and-trade-=-protectionism/362252/

So cap-and-trade is bad for consumers and bad for our national economy. Surely there is a better way to combat global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And there is: alternative energy.

Today, as we begin our second week of blogging about the economic crisis, I want to focus on planes, trains and automobiles.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the American economy has traveled down the road of transportation. Cars move people; planes and trains move people and products.

And that makes energy the key ingredient in our entire economy. When
gas prices are low, the economy moves along just fine. But when gas
prices go up, the economy starts to slow down.

We saw that again last summer when gas prices reached record highs. It wasn’t long before everyone was feeling the pinch.

Now, despite demand being moderate and inventories being high, gas prices
are rising. How is that possible?

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1901446,00.html

According to this article, the Saudis explain the rise in gas prices this way:
“The price rise is a function of optimism that better things are coming in the future.”

What?  So today’s gas prices are not based on today’s reality.

This week, as we begin to focus on solutions to our economic challenge, we’ll be looking more at how we can “re-fuel” our economy with different sources of energy.

With volatile fuel prices chocking the auto, agriculture, transportation and construction industries, we can kiss goodbye to any hopes of a quick and solid economic recovery. Its going to take something drastic to shock the heart of our economy and get it restarted. We need what I am calling CPR (Cheap Petroleum Reserves) to get us back to building, buying and hiring.

As we continue our series on the economic downturn of 2008, we need to discuss one of the most important factors of all: the price of oil.

Since the industrial revolution, fuel has been the key ingredient powering our machines and our transportation.  Quite literally, our economy is greased by oil.  So in the summer of 2008, when oil reached nearly $150 a barrel, it didn’t take long before that started to impact other sectors of the economy.  In my opinion, it’s no accident that about this time increasing numbers of people began getting behind in their mortgage payments.  When you’re paying $4 a gallon at the pump in order to drive yourself to work, money gets tight.  And the already deteriorating housing market began to deteriorate even more.

But 2008 was part of a pattern.  If you have a minute, take a look at this website for a graph showing the spikes in oil prices over the years:

http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm

Notice that every time there was a huge oil spike there was a bad economy: 1973 and 1979, for example.  This shouldn’t come as any surprise.  As a simple rule: when oil is heading north, the economy is heading south.

We learned that lesson again in 2008.  And it’s another reason why before this recession is over, we will have to deal with energy policy in this country.

And so I ask the question: Have you been keeping up with the price of oil over the past four months? Do you know what it is today? It’s going up and at a concerning rate. The “green sprouts” that we hear economists talk about in the news are weeds growing in the economic garden. Tune in on Monday and see how selling new cars and $20 oil will play a role in the turnaround.

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This week the president arrived in the Middle East:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/toby_harnden/blog/2009/06/03/two_kisses_for_king_abdullah_from_barack_obama_but_no_bow_this_time

Much is being made about the speech the president will give in Egypt.  But before that, he began his trip by landing in Saudi Arabia and meeting with King Abdullah. Political scientists say that in diplomacy, what you do often matters as much as what you say.  Starting the trip off in Saudi Arabia says a lot.  This is the same country that is gouging us at the gas pump and where much of the money that funds terrorist networks comes from.

I wish the president would have left Saudi Arabia off his travel itinerary.  But at least he supports alternative energy, like biomass.  The time has come to get off of Saudi oil and get onto American biomass.

Yesterday, I wrote about the news that oil had dropped a bit.  Today
comes news that OPEC will do everything it can to push it back up
again:

http://www.reuters.com/article/GlobalEnergy09/idUSTRE5513BW20090602

Since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab states have used oil as a
geopolitcal weapon.  OPEC wants us to use its oil resources to make all
of us dependent.

As the article notes:

"'The price will go to $80-$90 maybe at the beginning of 2010,'"
OPEC's Abdullah al-Badri told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.

"'I don't think the price will go down... By the end of the year
we'll see $75. $80-$85 is possible -- not with the demand we see at
this time, but if demand picks up month after month, then maybe we'll
see this price.'"

I ask the question again: how long are we going to let groups like
OPEC have this kind of power over our energy policy?  It's time for a
change.  It's time for biomass.

This week we learn that the price of oil has begun to slip:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090602/D98IG75O0.html

As I’ve previously written on this blog, I think oil is overpriced and will eventually come down.  This is a small example.  What’s interesting is why the price is down: investors fear that inflation is on the horizon.  And they may be right.  The projected Obama budget during the next few years is expected to add more to the national debt than all the other presidents combined from Washington to Bush.  Now, I’m not a mathematician.  But that sounds like a lot of money.

Inflation is another good reason why we need to invest in renewable energy.  Energy sources like biomass are affordable and effective…and can help get us off our oil addiction.

Check out my website for more information on how our new Advanced Trailer for Biomass is changing the energy industry.

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More and more people are seeing the light…the light that biomass is powering.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-05-21-voa51.cfm

Readers of this blog will know that we believe biomass is efficient, effective and domestic.  And that makes it a much better source of energy than foreign oil. Now, we are learning that biomass is a much better source of alternative energy than ethanol.

As this Voice of America report says:

“In a study published this week in the journal Science, researchers compared the energy efficiency of liquid ethanol made from corn and bioelectricity made from switchgrass, a wild, woody perennial, drought-resistant grass that can be grown in marginal or abandoned farmland.”

According to one of the researchers: “What we found is that if you burn this biomass to make electricity to power electric vehicles you can get a lot more transportation and a lot more greenhouse gas offsets than if you converted it to ethanol.”

Biomass works.  This research proves it yet again.  Now is the time to put it to work for all of us.

Here is the Biomass Magazine feature story on our Advanced Trailer for Biomass:

http://www.biomassmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=2713

- Biomass Magazine

Have Trailer-Will Move Biomass

This week the New York Times reported that the Senate is getting serious about energy policy in America:

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/05/18/18greenwire-all-eyes-on-renewables-as-sen-bingaman-sprints-12208.html

In particular, Washington appears to be heading toward a “Renewable Electricity Standard” that New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman is advocating. Here is how the article described it:

“Last week, Bingaman said that he had reached a ‘general agreement’ on a RES, which requires utilities to supply increasing amounts of power from sources like wind, solar and biomass, but added he was not ready for an official announcement.”

This is an important step forward in energy policy in this country. The moment we stop subsidizing foreign dictators with our money is not a moment too soon. I’m not generally in favor of Washington regulations. But if the utilities are not going to invest in renewable energy, then perhaps they need a nudge.

The time has come for a change in energy policy in America.

Gas prices have gone up 13 cents in one week in San Antonio?

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/05/11/daily29.html

How is that possible? What has changed so dramatically in seven days? Nothing. This just shows again how irrational the oil market is. And, it just shows again how distorted the oil market is by geopolitics. As previously noted in this blog, countries like Saudi Arabia have a vested interest in seeing prices go as high as possible.

The good news is that it doesn’t seem likely the Saudis will be able to jack prices up as high as they did last year:

“Gasoline typically sells higher in the summer months in response to the uptick in consumer demand. However, analysts note that it is unlikely that this summer’s gas prices will reach anything close to the record prices drivers paid last summer.”

But the bad news is that we still live at the mercy of Middle East dictators. Isn’t it time we find a better way to fuel our economy? Yes it is. Right here. Right now.

This week brings news that the price of oil may start coming down
again soon. According to Bloomberg News:

“Crude oil fell on speculation that last week’s 10 percent advance
will be undone as US inventories climb and fuel consumption
declines.” http://livetrade.com/?p=60405

But how is it that if oil inventories are high that prices got high
in the first place? This makes no sense. Unless you remember the
geopolitics that is involved in the gas market. So much of the market is distorted by factors like the people running OPEC. Every since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, OPEC has used oil as a weapon in its dealings with the West.

So when you look at the price of gas at the pump, remember that
gasoline prices don’t exactly operate like a free market. And that’s
just one more reason why we should look domestically at developing alternative energy.

That’s what a new report has concluded:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN0739606420090507> http://uk.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUKN0739606420090507

As the article notes: “Using switchgrass and other biomass to power electric cars is three times more efficient and more environmentally friendly than using ethanol to power traditional gasoline cars, U.S. scientists have found.”

The potential for biomass is enormous.  We’ve known for sometime that we can fuel electricity with it.  Now it appears we can fuel cars with it, too.  Biomass really does open up a whole new world for energy policy in this country.

The challenge remains to transport, store and dry the wood chips that fuel so much of biomass.  Our company has the solution: the Advanced Trailer for Biomass.  Check out the ebook on this website to read more.

Biomass is catching on…and colleges are helping lead the way!

This week, Auburn University announced “a collaborative effort among the City of Fultondale, Auburn University, Alabama Power Company and the Alabama Department of Economic and Community affairs to develop a plan for converting municipal green waste into clean, renewable energy. Tree limbs, leaves and grass clippings, normally bound for a local landfill, would be used to create a synthesis gas to power generators that produce electricity.”

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/breaking_news/story/709400.html

This is yet another example of how research institutions are starting to put their research into action. That’s why our company, Advanced Trailer, has partnered with the University of Idaho to use our trailer to help dry wood chips at their steam boiler plant. Our trailer will make biomass even more effective than before.

And by the way, if Auburn needs some trailers, we’re ready!

This week I’m continuing to talk about the great opportunity that
this country has with biomass.

Some people think that alternative energy is years away from being
ready to be produced. Not so with biomass. It’s ready right now.
In fact, we’ve practicing the basic biomass concept for years every time we light a fire.

The one challenge has been to find a vehicle that can ship, store and dry the wood chips. Now, thanks to my company’s Advanced Trailer for Biomass, that problem has been solved.

Read more about how our trailers are going to revolutionize the
biomass industry by clicking on the link to my ebook, “The Revolution Has Begun.”