The Coal Cowbunk

Does the Gov wanna dig some coal or not? He trots around the country getting his mug on the idiot box (where it belongs!) and letting fawning celebrity's call him "The Coal Cowboy." He does a huge dog and pony show (More dog than pony) in front of the Bull Mountain coal mine, acting like he personally saved Montana (the mine's buried in permitting trouble as the least of its failures).

But he has trouble making up his mind whether he supports the new coal plant in Great Falls. And now?

His economic development guru Evan Barrett says Schweitzer doesn't support new coal fired plants.

What the Governor really supports is talking. He supports telling Montanans that he's gonna make the State a major player in American energy policy. He supports telling environmentalists he's gonna protect the state from those nasty little carbon emissions from coal, so Baucus doesn't have to buy more pollution credits. He supports telling reporters that he's gonna be in tomorrow's headline.

When some legislators called out Barrett's anti-coal remarks, Barrett told them not to assume they understood what they were talking about. Nice.

And how many of the so-called "clean" coal plants the Governor claims he does support are operating in Montana since he's begun his crusade?

I'll give you a clue: It's less than .0001, and more than -1.

Sheister Accounting

Our buddies at the Gazette say there's a question about Schweitzer's accounting method that he used to come up with extra tax refunds. Apparently "non-standard accounting" was used to get the state's budget surplus up high enough to justify even more refunds.

Now, I like more refunds as much as the next guy. By which I mean, I don't like them as much as I would have liked permanent tax relief. But I don't think it's OK to use bad accounting to make it happen.

If we can just fudge the numbers however we want so the taxpayers get more back, then I'll be making some changes in the way I do my state income taxes next year. And when the Department of Revenue comes calling, I'll just quote David Ewer to them: "If you want to make the argument for less in tax rebates, that's your business."

A New Political Low

So yeah, Max Baucus, our senior Senator from Montana, has gone from taking credit to actually BUYING credit.

It's natural for politicians to take credit, especially for work they didn't do. But Baucus apparently needs even more credit than he can take. So he's buying it.

In this Gazette article, Max Baucus says he buys "air pollution credits." Supposedly that makes him not guilty for all the global warming he causes by flying, driving, and giving speeches.

I bet I'm not the only one asking, "Um, what?" Here's how it works.

Baucus flies home on a jet. That jet dumps X carbon into the atmosphere. Max's share of that carbon is X/200 -- or maybe X/150 since he probably talked while flying and contributed even more to global warming. So let's call X/150 Max's carbon emissions for the flight.

So maybe somewhere else in the world, there's an activity that takes X/150 carbon back OUT of the atmosphere. If Max could have credit for that, his flight would be "zero emission," and he'd be a good little environmentalist. Like any politician, he went looking for a way to take the credit. Turns out its for sale. A company called Native Energy sells the credit for the work they do that takes carbon out of the atmosphere.

Someone else does the good environmental thing, Max Baucus takes the credit. Nothing new here. Except this part:

What does Native Energy do that supposedly takes carbon out of the atmosphere? Well, they invest in wind farms -- of the kind environmentalists kill in Montana. But... um... OK, so a wind farm has zero emissions. But putting in nothing is not the same as taking something out. The only way a wind farm could be said to take carbon out of the atmosphere is if the electricity from the wind farm REPLACED electricity from, say, a coal plant.

Does that really happen? Of course not. When you get a new 50 megawtts from a wind farm, does anyone really believe a coal plant somewhere reduces production by 50 mw? No.

So. Take credit. Take credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something you didn't do. BUY credit for something that never even got done in the first place. Yup, it's a new political low.

But at least Baucus looks good.

Let's talk about today's Gazette: Enviros killed a wind farm. The sad thing isn't the fact that there's not gonna be a wind farm. The sad thing is that anyone is surprised.

Let's look at the environmentalist movement's own rhetoric. Every good environmentalist will tell you that the real cause of "global warming" -- and every other environmental problem -- is population growth.

Next step: Any good scientist will tell you that you can't get something for nothing. For population to grow requires ... it requires more. More food, more space, and MORE ENERGY.

It's simple, folks. Cheap, easy energy equals a thriving human society, which equals population growth, which equals a blemish on the face of the mother Earth goddess, or whatever.

Make no mistake: environmentalists do not like energy. Not coal energy, not wind energy, not green energy, not purple with yellow polka-dots energy. Of COURSE environmentalists killed a wind power plant. They'll kill anything that makes it more likely humans will thrive at the expence of other species.