Four Years Ago To The Day, I Called The Keystone XL Dead; For President Obama, Cognitive Dissonance -- And One Could Tell That From His Speech Killing The Keystone -- November 10, 2015

From one of the better writers on staff at The Wall Street Journal: Keystone Is a Fake Green Victory -- If abundant fossil fuels is what affords such victories, well, you see the paradox:

By all means, read Bill McKibben’s victory proclamation on Keystone XL posted by the New Yorker, first for its infantile analysis.

• He sees Keystone as a harbinger, which it surely is: President Obama waited seven years to kill the pipeline, then did so when he no longer had to face voters and when gasoline prices are near an all-time low in real terms. If abundant fossil fuels is what it takes to afford Mr. McKibben such victories, well, you can see the paradox. 
• He celebrates the divestment movement as if it means anything. But buyers will always materialize for profitable businesses. Anyway, 80% of the world’s fossil-fuel reserves are not held by publicly traded businesses, but by state-run companies—run by states that have never shown interest in anything but revenue maximization.
• He thinks solar is somehow changing the energy picture, but for every additional unit of solar the world consumed in 2014, it consumed 325 additional units of fossil energy. 
• He is fooled by warnings from the BlackRock investment house and Mark Carney of the Bank of England about fossil-fuel reserves becoming “stranded assets,” as if energy shares are priced in the expectation that 100% of hydrocarbon reserves will be produced. 

All assets are liable to become stranded, i.e., not profitable. This is called risk. 

There hasn’t been a day in the past four decades when energy investors haven’t complacently priced into shares the prospect of legislation or regulation depressing their returns.

Remember the Clinton-Gore BTU tax proposal? The colossal lie that greenies tell themselves is that the machinations of Exxon are what’s holding up climate policy. Big Oil is an attractive villain to eco activists because Big Oil is already a villain to the public, but mainly because the public suspects Big Oil of conspiring to hike gas prices. 

Much, much more at the link.

To get an idea of much fossil fuel is used to make solar panels, do a google search. One hit is over at Spectrum.

********************************

As The World Turns

This is so cool. It was four years to the day -- November 10, 2011 -- that I said the Keystone was dead. I never realized it was four years to the day until Don sent me an article and then got to rambling in this post.

Wow, what great memories. Do you remember the series that the blog developed on the Keystone story? I forget which episode we started with and which episode we ended with but here are the ones I have:

Episode 50
Episode 49
Episode 48
Episode 47
Episode 46
Episode 45
Episode 44
Episode 43