Tag Archives: fossil fuels

environmental news

Celebrate Earth Day every day

Why do we choose just a single day to honor Planet Earth, to call attention to the need to provide tender loving care to the only planet upon which human beings can survive — and thrive?

But … that’s what we do. Today is Earth Day, dear reader.

It was founded on this day 48 years ago to protest the damage that massive industrialization had done to our cherished planet. So, the recognition continues.

But this Earth Day is a bit worrisome to many of us.

Why? Well, we have a government agency — the Environmental Protection Agency — that is run by someone who doesn’t seem to place as much value on the protection part of his agency’s mission as many millions of us would prefer.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt seems hell bent on wiping environmental protection regulations off the books. He has the support of the president who nominated him to this job. Frankly, Pruitt’s management so far of the EPA has been nothing short of shameful.

But I prefer instead to look beyond the bumbling bureaucrat who runs the EPA.

Each of us has a role to play in caring for the Good Earth. Therefore, I won’t waste time criticizing the government — beyond what I’ve just stated in this blog post.

Our planet’s climate is changing. Coastal lowland is at risk of being inundated. We keep cutting down millions of acres of trees to make room for more cement and steel, which depletes the atmosphere of oxygen that living creatures consume to survive. We’re burning more fossil fuels, putting even more pressure on our fragile atmosphere.

Yes, there are alternatives to pursue. How do we look for them as individuals or families? We can drive fuel-efficient motor vehicles. We can perhaps invest more in alternative forms of energy. It’s windy out there and last I heard, the wind is as clean and infinite an energy supply as I can imagine.

Then there’s water. If you thought oil and natural gas were the lifeblood of a community, try building a town or a city without water. Those who live on the High Plains of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico know the value of water. That aquifer that flows under us is receding. What are we going to do about it?

Protecting Mother Earth isn’t just a one-day-per-year event. It ought to be at the top of our minds every day.

Check this out from the Amarillo Globe-News: “Where I work we have a program called Stewardship 365, and it’s an oil and gas company” said Amarillo Environmental Task Force member Cole Camp as he conducted a recent tour of one of the City’s recycling venues at 27th and Hayes. “So we’re working to make sure people take that mindset of being cognizant of the environment home with them. It’s not just at work. It doesn’t have to be difficult. I find it really easy to do these things. It’s just as easy for me to put my cans in my recycling bin in my garage, as it is to throw it away in the trash can. It’s just a couple of more feet. So, with a little effort, we can make a lot of progress. By using the recycling facilities here in the City and keeping the waste from going to landfill, the landfill doesn’t expand nearly as fast and the City doesn’t have to pay for methane systems. By recycling we’re reducing waste and saving money.”

Excellent advice. Happy Earth Day … today and always!

environmental news, local news

Wind: a curse and a blessing

I wrote this tweet earlier today: It’s official. I have grown weary of this incessant Texas Panhandle wind. Enough … already!

Truth be told, I view the legendary Panhandle wind in two contexts.

Yes, it’s a curse. The dirt that flies gets in my eyes. It coats everything. Our recreational vehicle that now shelters us full time is constantly dusty, which drives my wife crazy; me, too, actually.

Our RV rocks and rolls as the wind buffets it. Hey, it’s March! We’re supposed to be this windy on the High Plains of Texas. I get it, man!

That’s the curse part of it.

The blessing? It provides “fuel” to turn those thousands of wind turbines one sees on our expansive landscape. When I hear the wind howl outside, when I see the trees bend and the tall grass wave I think of the benefit that the wind brings.

It provides evidence of the wisdom in Texas’s heavy investment in wind energy. I’ve noted already on this blog how Texas and California have more in common than one might think.

Both states have developed sophisticated wind energy economies. I cannot remember at this moment which of these states is No. 1 in the nation; something tells me it’s California. Texas, though, is a strong No. 2 if it hasn’t overtaken California already in the amount of energy produced by wind.

I happen to be a big proponent of alternatives to fossil fuels. I am chagrined in the extreme by Donald John Trump’s continued emphasis on drilling for oil and for the development of what he keeps referring to as “clean coal,” whatever the hell that means.

The wind that annoys the daylights out of folks like me also has contributed to the surplus of fossil fuel that has helped — more or less — keep a lid on the price of oil and natural gas.

As I keep reminding anyone who’ll listen, wind is infinite and clean. There’s no need to call it “clean wind.”

OK, so it blows a lot here. I might be officially sick and tired of it, I also recognize the long-term benefit it brings.

business news

Boone Pickens calls it a career … for the final time?

T. Boone Pickens is retiring.

Reportedly for the third time. Something tells me that this is it for the legendary Texas Panhandle oil and natural gas mogul.

Pickens is 89 years of age. His health has been sketchy of late. He wrote this in a letter published on LinkedIn:

“Health-wise, I’m still recovering from a series of strokes I suffered late last year, and a major fall over the summer. If you are lucky enough to make it to 89 years of age like I have, those things tend to put life in perspective. It’s time to start making new plans and setting new priorities.”

Pickens recently put his vast Mesa Vista estate in rural Roberts County up for sale. He’s asking about $250 million for the 80,000-acre spread.

To say this man has left a huge footprint across the Texas Panhandle would be to say that Donald John Trump has, um, “changed” the presidency of the United States.

Pickens’s influence spreads far beyond the Panhandle, the region that helped him build the beginning of his immense fortune. And along the way, he made his share of enemies as well as friends. He once engaged in a notorious feud with the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years until August 2012; Pickens’s beef with the paper predated my arrival there, but I heard all about it.

I am in neither camp. I am merely acquainted with Pickens. We have what I believe is a nice relationship. While working for a time as a “special projects reporter” for KFDA NewsChannel 10 in Amarillo, I had the pleasure of interviewing Pickens at his opulent Mesa Vista ranch.

I certainly know of the impact he has made on the region and on the world’s energy industry.

My intent with this blog post merely is to wish Pickens well as he, in his own words, begins “making new plans and setting new priorities.”

national news

Here’s a thought: Let’s keep DST

Do not count me as one of those twice-a-year crybabies who gripes and moans about the changes from Daylight Saving Time back to Standard Time, then back to DST … and on and on it goes.

We’ve “fallen back” one more time. The sun will rise an hour earlier on the clocks we’ve all (or many of us) have turned back before we turned in for the night. It’s going to get dark an hour earlier at the end of the day, too.

I don’t object to the back-and-forth like some folks do.

However, I am beginning to wonder whether we ought to just keep it on DST as a hedge against the reason it was made a more-or-less permanent fixture in our lives back in the 1970s.

Do you remember the Arab oil embargo of 1973? We had those long lines at the gasoline service stations. Gas dealers were running out of fuel. The price of fuel spiked to a buck a gallon and we all went apoplectic at the thought.

The government imposed Daylight Saving Time to ensure a way to keep from turning on the lights in our homes. We wanted to save energy that at the time we thought was in short supply. If the sun was shining later in the day, the thought went, we could conserve electricity that in many parts of the country is produced by fossil fuels; that’s the case in the Texas Panhandle, for instance.

Where are we now? The energy crisis has abated more or less. We have plenty of fuel. You know what? It’s not an endless supply. Oil is still a finite resource. I get that the “crisis” as we once knew it has passed. But why not maintain at least a semblance of alertness to the need to conserve what we ought to know won’t last forever?

Given that I have environmentalist tendencies at heart, that is what I would like to see. I won’t bitch about switching back and forth, not even in the spring when we lose that hour’s sleep by turning the clocks ahead for DST.

Finally, we can stop the silly media chatter about whether it’s called “Daylight Savings Time” or “Daylight Saving Time.” Now that annoys — and the pun is fully intended — the daylight out of me.

environmental news

Trying to process Perry’s affection for fossil fuels

I am having a bit of difficulty processing Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s recent tortured and convoluted connection between the use of fossil fuels and sexual abuse.

The former Texas governor spoke in Washington the other day and said — you have to follow this closely — that nations in Africa can avoid sexual abuse of children and young women if they burn more fossil fuels that help “keep the lights on.”

I’m still in a bit of a fog over how one connects one with the other — and does so with a straight face.

I want to offer another element in this strange conflating of energy use and sexual abuse. Actually it’s hard setting aside Perry’s nutty notion that sexual attacks occur only at night, but I’m going to try nevertheless.

When the energy secretary governed Texas, our state turned into a leader in the development of alternative energy sources. I’m talking mostly about wind power. Yet the energy boss seems to have swilled the fossil-fuel Kool-Aid served up by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general who seems enamored with the oil and natural gas industry.

If the energy secretary believes it’s important to keep the lights on, why doesn’t he fall back on the wind power that has become such an enormous presence in places like, oh, the Texas Panhandle and the South Plains?

I don’t often say something positive about Perry, but the development of a clean, renewable alternative energy source — which has an infinite supply out here on the Caprock — provides a pretty stellar legacy that should make the former governor proud.

Indeed, he ought to speak more openly and aggressively about promoting wind energy as a critical component of the national energy policy.

I haven’t heard much from Perry on that score. Instead, he offers a silly notion that connects burning fossil fuels as an antidote to sexual abuse.

Weird, man.

environmental news

Follow the logic if you can

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick “Oops” Perry has made a curious leap between fossil fuel development and consumption and sexual abuse.

I’m trying to connect the dots. I am having a difficult time of it.

Perry said fossil fuel consumption can prevent sexual abuse because the “lights are on.” The Energy boss made his remarks at a forum sponsored by NBC News and Axios.

According to The Texas Tribune, Perry said: “It’s going to take fossil fuels to push power out into those villages in Africa, where a young girl told me to my face, ‘one of the reasons that electricity is so important to me is not only because I’m not going to have to try to read by the light of a fire and have those fumes literally killing people.’”

Oh, boy.

Is he pushing fossil fuels as an energy source or is he speaking about the brutality of sexual abuse suffered by villagers?

I’m going to assume — given the secretary’s former position as the governor of Texas, which produces a goodly amount of oil and natural gas — that he is pitching fossil fuel consumption.

Or is he?

Here seems to be where the Trump administration that Perry serves is missing the boat. This big world of ours is full of alternative energy sources that also can keep the lights on. Wind, solar, hydropower … they all are renewable, clean and safe. I’ll also throw nuclear power into that mix, too, even though nuke plants — which are safer than they used to be — aren’t yet totally safe from cataclysmic accidents.

Perry went on, according to the Tribune: “But also from the standpoint of sexual assault, when the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts,” Perry continued.

The Sierra Club, one of the nation’s foremost environmental interest groups, has called on Perry to quit in light of his remarks. I won’t go that far.

Perry offers confusion

I do question the logic the energy secretary is employing in connecting fossil fuels with sexual predation.

He lost me.

business news

No, sir, government isn’t the same as a business

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting on three occasions with one of the smartest men in America.

T. Boone Pickens has earned a fortune in the oil and natural gas business. He knows fossil fuels better than, well, almost anyone.

The former Amarillo resident and current fossil fuel tycoon, though, misses the mark when he says that you can run government “like a business.”

Pickens has written an essay for Texas Monthly, in which he says in part: “In the late eighties and early nineties, I considered running for governor of Texas. Now a lot has changed since that time. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the need to make sure we have a government that works.

“’Can you really run a government like a business?’ I was asked at the time. ‘Sure you can,’ I replied. ‘It’s a business to start with. Taxpayers are like stockholders, and both are entitled to a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. For a dollar spent, taxpayers ought to receive a dollar back in value.’”

Pickens is as smart a businessman as anyone you’ll ever know.

But as another tycoon is learning, government is a much different animal than a business. That tycoon, Donald J. Trump — who Pickens supported wholeheartedly for president of the United States — is learning in real time that the founders established a checks and balances system for a good reason. It is to ensure that no one branch of government runs roughshod over the other two.

The crux of Pickens’ essay was to extol the need to make the United States energy independent. He’s right about that need. He’s also got a dog in that fight, given that he owns a whole lot of fossil fuel rights in the United States and stands to benefit tremendously from pumping these fuels out of the ground.

He misses another point, though. It is that we already have made huge strides toward that goal in the past eight years. The Obama administration sought to provide incentives for investment in alternative energy sources: wind, solar, hydropower, biofuels. The big spike in oil prices in recent years has prompted much more fossil fuel exploration in this country. Add to that the fuel efficiency standards mandated on automakers and you have a sort of perfect storm that weans us from foreign oil.

Back to my main point.

Business is business. Government, though, is another creature altogether. I get that Pickens desires a business-like approach to government. However, the principles one applies to running a business do not transfer straight into the act of politicking, legislating and the making of laws.

Business executives can make decisions that stick, with no questions asked. Politicians have a different platform on which they operate. They have voters to whom they must answer. They also have colleagues who might have different points of view, a differing world view. They are as wedded to their view of the world as the businessman or woman is wedded to whatever he or she believes.

The “business” of running a government requires a certain skill set that business executives need to learn. From what I’ve seen of the businessman/president, he hasn’t yet learned it.

Perhaps someone like Boone Pickens could figure it out. If only, as he said, he had less history behind him and more in front of him.

environmental news, national news, political news, State news

Gov. Perry forced to eat his words

Rick “Oops” Perry called Donald J. Trump a “cancer on conservatism.”

He said his one-time Republican presidential campaign foe was devoid of “principles.”

The former Texas governor once pledged to get rid of the Energy Department, except he couldn’t remember it at the time he made the pledge.

Now the man he condemned with such harsh rhetoric has asked him to lead the department he wanted to eliminate.

Go … figure.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/rick-perry-seeks-to-lead-the-energy-department-an-agency-he-pledged-to-abolish/ar-AAm122q?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Gov. Perry’s nomination to be energy secretary suggests two important things to me.

One is that politicians’ views of other politicians always are subject to change when the moment presents itself. Perry’s remarks about the president-elect happened to be accurate, in my view. They didn’t stick. So now, if he’s confirmed, Perry will lead a Cabinet agency that he seems to know little about and will work at the pleasure of a man he once described in extremely harsh terms.

The other is that energy development isn’t just about drilling for fossil fuels. Perry, as Texas governor, knows that. We generate a good bit of wind energy in Texas, especially out here on the High Plains.

Trump, though, has expressed next to zero knowledge of, or interest in, alternative energy production. He keeps talking about grabbing the oil fields of the Islamic State and other terrorists and capturing the fuel for our own needs. Is the energy secretary going to assist in that endeavor or will he proceed with promoting a comprehensive energy policy that includes the myriad forms of alternative energy sources available to us?

Gov. Perry is another one of those questionable nominees with whom Trump is surrounding himself.

I am now shaking my head.

local news, national news, political news

Has conflict frayed Trump’s fundraising efforts?

Oklahoma State alum T. Boone Pickens, Jr. fires up the Cowboy fan base during a tailgate party on the East Plaza of AT&T Stadium before the Cotton Bowl game against Missouri, Friday, January 3, 2014 in Arlington, Texas. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) 01042014xSPORTS

T. Boone Pickens says he’s committed to electing Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is far friendlier to the oil and natural gas industry than his likely Democratic foe this fall, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Pickens — a former Amarillo resident — made his immense fortune in oil and natural gas.

It follows, then, that Pickens would be in Trump’s camp.

But there’s been a hiccup. Maybe. Perhaps.

Pickens was going to play host to a meeting at his sprawling Mesa Vista Ranch north of Pampa on June 11-3. The meeting was for a super-PAC supporting Trump. It’s been called off.

Why? Pickens’ spokesman blamed it on “scheduling conflicts,” which often becomes kind of a throwaway excuse for anything that gets postponed, or canceled.

There have been reports, though, of strife and turmoil among the Trump campaign and its fundraising machine, according to the Dallas Morning News.

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/t-boone-pickens-postponing-major-fundraising-event-for-donald-trump.html/

Which is it? Scheduling and logistics? Or is there trouble in Trump World?

I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Pickens three times — the most recent time just two weeks ago. I don’t know him well.  I know a lot more of him, though, having studied him from some distance over nearly 30 years.

A part of me just doesn’t believe he would have announced a big event at his ranch without having nailed down all the particulars he needed to make it a reality.

And that kind of makes me wonder if the issue doesn’t lie within the Trump apparatus.

Pickens’ team says the event will occur later this summer, after the Republican convention.

We’ll just have to wait and see … yes?

 

local news, national news, political news, State news

Wind power is in the wind

wind farm

ADRIAN, Texas — You have to squint your eyes a bit to take in the view in this picture.

It’s along Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle. I shot the picture this afternoon with my fancy-shmancy phone camera as I was returning home from a lunch meeting with a colleague in Tucumcari, N.M.

It’s a wind farm. Lots and lots and lots of wind turbines are blowing in the breeze, generating electricity — I reckon — to be shipped to points hither and yon. Given that I don’t get out as much as I used to, I was struck by the sight of hundreds of those turbines along nearly the entire length of I-40 through Oldham County after driving back onto the Caprock.

I want to call attention to this form of energy because of the presidential campaign that’s now in full swing in both major political parties.

Republicans and Democrats are seeking to nominate candidates for the White House, one of whom will succeed President Obama on Jan. 20, 2017.

That silence you’ve heard along the campaign trail has dealt with wind energy. You remember wind energy, don’t you?

Politicians are supposed to talk about it as a way to wean this nation from its dependence on fossil fuels. We’ve made some progress in one critical area: The United States is about to become the world’s leading fossil fuel energy producer, which means we’ve all but ended our dependence on foreign oil.

Of late, the only mention I’ve heard of energy production has been on the Democratic side of the campaign trail, with Bernie Sanders accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of being in the hip pocket of fossil fuel producers; Clinton has fired back, saying Sanders also is beholden to campaign contributors who are associated with fossil fuel producers. The world has a glut of oil, demand is down, therefore so is the price of fossil fuel-related products — such as gasoline!

Oh sure, the candidates traipsed through Iowa corn fields in the first contest of the season and talked here and there about ethanol, the “bio-fuel” produced by corn. One of the big surprises of the campaign, of course, was Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory in Iowa — even though he stuck his neck out and criticized ethanol subsidies as a form of government giveaway the nation couldn’t afford.

The Republican/Democratic Road Show trekked eventually to Texas. Did you hear much around the Panhandle about how any of the candidates would seek to shore up wind power?

If you did, then were dialed in far more acutely than I was. I don’t recall hearing a peep out of that still-large herd of candidates in the time leading up to the March 1 Texas primaries.

I’m proud of my state for becoming a leader in wind energy. Think of it: Texas and California have something in common after all, as they are the two leading wind-producing states in the country. Who knew?

Heaven knows we have enough of it here. It’s renewable and clean — even when it kicks up tons of dirt from the cultivated fields that are spread out for miles upon miles along our vast horizon.

Here’s my plea to the candidates … if they or their staffers see this blog post: How about talking more about wind and other renewables? It’s no longer cool to just “drill baby, drill.” We’ve got a lot of wind out there that’s not coming from the mouths of political blowhards.

How about ensuring we find ways to put it to use?