This shows why conservative environmental groups can be worse than useless, they can actually cause a significant amount of harm by being on the wrong side of an issue and convincing the public that environmentalists are behind some type of anti-environmental behavior, as EDF is here.

A while back they decided it was a bad idea to keep reminding the rest of us about their funding, so the F was dropped.

So apparently at least it's not working.

Erectile disfunction?  Should have left the "F" on there maybe.

But there are some compelling reasons to have a very term-term plan to increase domestic oil & gas production, given that there are so "silver bullets" that have an immediate impact. Such a policy should be balanced heavily in favor of a credit program for clean technology, conservation, thermal re-use, R&D, and so forth. Plus, we need to weed out failed strategies such as most any kind of ethanol.

Strangely, Big Oil isn't so hot on the idea of developing domestic oil and gas as one might think. Many of those in favor of it are often "wildcatter" companies that seek partial investment from the majors and large investors such as GE. An example would be a small three-man company in Connecticut that is developing gas wells off the lower Texas coast, backed by hundreds of millions in GE. Virtually every aspect is contracted.

But returning to my point, many offshore majors are leaving the Gulf of Mexico, for a variety of reasons. First, the cost of overhead in the US is too high because of labor, insurance, lack of trained labor, hurricanes, and so forth. My understanding is that most inshore and offshore rigs are being towed to Nigeria, Brazil, and elsewhere. Even with higher government royalties, the companies make more money abroad that here in the US.

This does lead to quite a conundrum, since energy produced abroad and imported into the US must be delivered by tanker, thus increasing CO2 emissions far more than using efficient local pipelines. How can it be cheaper yet make MORE greenhouse gases? Think before you respond that "a carbon tax would take care of all that."

One interesting result is that with billions invested in LNG terminals, a popular energy policy started about 5 years ago, little if any is actually coming to the US because we're being out-bid by nations in the Far East. Most new LNG terminals have just a shipment or two to cool down the pipes and check the engineering, and can't sell any significant amount domestically. I'd rank that up there with the ethanol boondoggle if you ask me. Just remember the Law of Unintended Consequences ...
sam

Onward through the fog

It seems the grass roots blood is not flowing to the member(s at the top) intended to penetrate through the barrier of lobbyist disinformation.

Rendering energy and ag policy reform impotent.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

It's an in-artful approach to give in on every point like these groups always do, ED, NRDC, and other mainstream lobbying (grass roots disconnected), funded by we the eco-people.

The art of the deal is to make an offer, for instance, limited extra area available for drilling, with new safety and oversight procedures, including the public, with better public access to what is happening, via webcam for instance.

If the limited permitted drilling results in actual new production that could actually help increase supply enough to stabilize prices, in a safe mannwer, tghen and only then increase drilling area again.  Concentrate on most developed areas first (they are already at risk), to protect wildlife.

This way we can point to studies that prove our point, drilling for marginal extra oil offshore won't help appreciably on supply or price, only plugin electricity and mass transit can really reduce demand to stabilize the price of fuel.

This issue is Rove's dream, a way to push swing voters to the right, the very powerful gas price issue, "it's the economy stupid".

So we counter with, yes it is the economy.  But more drilling won't save it, instead it will encourage the fiction that gas guzzling can continue without killing our economy and the climate.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The problem is that the big green groups who are State House and Inside the Beltway focused live in a world where access, and deal making are foremost, and principles and values are taken out with the trash every night. One has to remember that their real constituents are not the environmental grunts who are fighting the good fight out there in the hinterlands. Their consituents are funders, and those they can cut a deal with.

Our only hope in dealing with them and green washing politicians, is to build the environmental grass roots, and the little green groups who fearlessly do battle with the gods of our society, while lovingly kicking the asses of the big greens when they do something stupid. Which they do. On a regular basis.

Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH

Randy Cunningham

"...lovingly kicking the asses of the big greens"

Still send in money but reduce it a bit and explain what you want them to change their nuclear, fuel farming, clean coal boosting ways.

To back production based direct subsidies, to renewable/conservation consumers.  The subsidies funded by money now wasted subsidizing nuclear, fossil, and fuel farmed power and fuel.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

The reasons I support a narrow short-term drilling policy in relatively "good" areas such as the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is not because of money or that the US would become more "energy secure."  That's a joke! It simply is a hedge against other countries bidding up the supply side.

Take Southwest Airlines, which for years used a hedging as a mechanism to keep fuel coming at a reasonable cost, even though rising all the time. SW Air is a good example because they're using electric ground power rather than auxiliary jet turbine power when docked at the terminals - well, imagine if that power was solar and wind? Imagine of that solar and wind power was a hedge against other rising energy costs?

Perhaps we all want instant gratification, an overnight sensation where coal power would disappear. But one has to work on the margins and chip away a little at a time, changing the economics and the way people think. And I think we're reaching that tipping point pretty fast ...

Onward through the fog

Just for the record, the 'f' is back.
Here's the story as I understand it.
EDF had decided to drop the F because they were receiving requests from external groups for funding for environmental projects.
EDF changed its name to Environmental Defense and had the same company that came up with FedEx come up with a new symbol/brand name; they came up with 'e' the lower-case e.
After a few years, e realized that they had far more name recognition as EDF and switched back.

Nice, Krupp! Good to have ED come out fully as a non-environmental environmental group. Give 100's of billions away to polluters, more oil drilling-- they're like the Lieberman of green groups!