Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
From Climate Science Watch (March 18, 2010): To the libertarians, the widely-shared scientific assessment that human-caused climate change will likely produce major harmful consequences — and the communication of this evidence to the public by the leading climate scientists — poses a particularly serious threat. An informed public concerned about the likelihood of harmful impacts of unchecked global climatic disruption is more likely to call for significant government action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In order to block proactive government policymaking and keep corporate interests unregulated, libertarian groups have focused a significant part of their efforts on climate change on distorting the science to confuse public opinion, denying the seriousness of the problem, and, most recently, impugning the integrity of the climate science community. The Koch brothers have stepped forward with deep pockets to bankroll such efforts.
Many people have already heard about the libertarian billionaire businessmen brothers Charles and David Koch who have helped to found and/or fund a number of non-profit organizations and think tanks—including the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Federalist Society, the Reason Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation—whose aim seems to be the advancement of the Kochs’ agenda “that government taxes and regulations impinge on prosperity.”
What many people may not be aware of is the number of academic centers/institutions that the Kochs are also helping to fund at both public and private colleges and universities—including Florida State University, West Virginia University, Brown University, Troy University, and Utah State University.
I’m going to focus on just one of these Koch-funded academic centers in this post—the Mercatus Center, a conservative think tank located at George Mason University in Virginia—and on Susan B. Dudley, a woman who worked at Mercatus and was then appointed to a regulatory position at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 2007.
THE MERCATUS CENTER
In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, the Mercatus Center was described as “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.” Previously known as the Center for the Study of Free Market Processes, the Mercatus Center was founded by Richard Fink—with a grant from Charles Koch. Koch currently serves on the center’s Board of Directors—as does Fink who is also an executive vice president and a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, Inc.
Jane Mayer wrote the following in Covert Operations, an article that appeared in the New Yorker in 2010: The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.
Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, has called the Mercatus Center “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries and other corporate interests.” Richard Fink claims, however, that the center does not actively promote the Koch company’s private interests. He said that Koch “has other means of fighting its battles” in Washington and that they never had a nonprofit advance their agenda. Some people would disagree.
Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas law professor who specializes in environmental issues, told Mayer that “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency.” Another environmental lawyer who spoke to Mayer said that Mercatus was “a means of laundering economic aims.” The lawyer described the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”
Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist, told Mayer that the relationship between George Mason University and Mercatus is an unusual arrangement. “George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds. Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control.” Stein claimed that Mercatus was “ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.”
According to Sourcewatch, Mercatus “has engaged in campaigns involving deregulation, especially environmental deregulation.” It has been reported that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that George W. Bush put on his hit list were first suggested by academics who worked at the Mercatus Center.
In 2010, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute released a study that named Koch Industries as one of this country’s top ten polluters. That same year, Greenpeace released a report titled Koch Industries Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine. In the report’s executive summary, Greenpeace stated that Koch Industries had “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition.” (Greenpeace also reported that Koch foundations have contributed more than $48 million in grants to “climate opposition groups” since 1997—and that more than half of that has been donated since 2005.)
MEET SUSAN B. DUDLEY
Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, wrote in 2007 about George W. Bush’s re-nomination of “a veritable rogues’ gallery of anti-environmental figures to key posts in federal agencies.” O’Donnell said that Susan B. Dudley, one of the nominees, was “a true anti-regulatory zealot. As director of regulatory studies at the industry-funded Mercatus Center, Dudley was like a wrecking ball out to smash key safeguards.” He added, “Putting Dudley in this key federal post would be like naming comedian Michael Richards to head the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.”
According to Lee Fang of Think Progress, George W. Bush appointed Susan B. Dudley, the director of the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center, to head the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—after the center had attacked the “EPA regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gases by challenging the science of climate change.” (Dudley’s was a recess appointment in 2007.)
O’Donnell said that as head of OIRA Dudley would have one “of the most obscure yet powerful jobs in Washington. The person in this position can, largely without public scrutiny, interfere with actions of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, and become a conduit for industries seeking to avoid federal health, environmental and safety standards.”
The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections, a report produced by Public Citizen and OMB Watch in 2006, said that while Dudley worked at Mercatus, she “attacked proposed regulations in formal submissions to government agencies and orchestrated campaigns to derail other safeguards already on the books.” The report also claimed that Dudley displayed “an extreme anti-regulatory ideology” and “questioned the merit of regulation altogether in congressional testimony and regulatory comments, and she has urged weakening, if not eliminating entirely, public safeguards.”
Dudley worked to oppose public health regulations as a “hidden tax” that hinders profits when she was at Mercatus. She opposed all of the following: EPA plans that would have set tougher standards for smog; lower-polluting cars and SUVs—as well as cleaner gasoline; air bags in cars; stronger regulations for arsenic in drinking water; measures that could help curb global warming. (Think Progress)
Dudley has been quoted as stating that the “evidence regarding global warming and human contribution to it is mixed, and…if a slight warming does occur, historical evidence suggests it is likely to be beneficial, occurring at night, in the winter, and at the poles.” In her testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety/Committee on Environment and Public on April 24, 1997, Dudley said: “Ozone in the troposphere, like ozone in the stratosphere, has the beneficial effect of screening ultraviolet radiation, which is known to have various health and welfare effects including melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, cataracts, and crop and fishery damage.”
The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of more than seventy universities that offer Ph.D.s in atmospheric and related sciences, doesn’t see it the same way Dudley does. UCAR has said the following about ozone in the troposphere:
Ozone occurs naturally at ground-level in low concentrations. The two major sources of natural ground-level ozone are hydrocarbons, which are released by plants and soil, and small amounts of stratospheric ozone, which occasionally migrate down to the earth’s surface. Neither of these sources contributes enough ozone to be considered a threat to the health of humans or the environment.
But the ozone that is a byproduct of certain human activities does become a problem at ground level and this is what we think of as ‘bad’ ozone. With increasing populations, more automobiles, and more industry, there’s more ozone in the lower atmosphere. Since 1900 the amount of ozone near the earth’s surface has more than doubled. Unlike most other air pollutants, ozone is not directly emitted from any one source. Tropospheric ozone is formed by the interaction of sunlight, particularly ultraviolet light, with hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, which are emitted by automobiles, gasoline vapors, fossil fuel power plants, refineries, and certain other industries.
And this is what UCAR said about the negative impacts of tropospheric ozone:
While stratospheric ozone shields us from ultraviolet radiation, in the troposphere this irritating, reactive molecule damages forests and crops; destroys nylon, rubber, and other materials; and injures or destroys living tissue. It is a particular threat to people who exercise outdoors or who already have respiratory problems.
Ozone affects plants in several ways. High concentrations of ozone cause plants to close their stomata. These are the cells on the underside of the plant that allow carbon dioxide and water to diffuse into the plant tissue. This slows down photosynthesis and plant growth. Ozone may also enter the plants through the stomata and directly damage internal cells.
Rubber, textile dyes, fibers, and certain paints may be weakened or damaged by exposure to ozone. Some elastic materials can become brittle and crack, while paints and fabric dyes may fade more quickly.
When ozone pollution reaches high levels, pollution alerts are issued urging people with respiratory problems to take extra precautions or to remain indoors. Smog can damage respiratory tissues through inhalation. Ozone has been linked to tissue decay, the promotion of scar tissue formation, and cell damage by oxidation. It can impair an athlete’s performance, create more frequent attacks for individuals with asthma, cause eye irritation, chest pain, coughing, nausea, headaches and chest congestion and discomfort. It can worsen heart disease, bronchitis, and emphysema.
Prior to Dudley’s appointment to OIRA, Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, wrote in an email exchange with Media Transparency that “Dudley would be the most anti-regulatory zealot within the Bush Administration, bar none. Her ideology is based upon a core belief that regulations are generally bad and there should be no regulation unless it can be proven to be cost effective and supported from within the market place.”
The Cost is Too High report said that Dudley’s radicalism put her “right at home at Mercatus”—which was “founded by corporate interests and endowed by large corporations, free-market oriented foundations, and leaders from the corporate world” and “has long operated at the intersection of money, power, and influence in order to promote corporate special interests at the expense of the public interest.”
Note: Susan B. Dudley is a Research Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration and is serving as the Director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
EPA Nemesis: Mercatus Center Another Koch Think Tank (Sourcewatch/Center for Media and Democracy)
Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group Mercatus Center (Greenpeace)
From Promoting Acid Rain To Climate Denial: Over 20 Years Of David Koch’s Polluter Front Groups (Think Progress)
The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)
Koch’s Web of Influence (Center for Public Integrity)
Koch-Powered Tea Party Pushes Climate Denial Bill In New Hampshire (Think Progress)
Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. (The New Yorker)
The White House’s Agents Of Environmental Corruption (Think Progress)
Does Bush know how to pick ’em or does he know how to pick ’em? (Daily Kos)
The Cost is Too High: How Susan Dudley Threatens Public Protections (Public Citizen & OMB Watch)
Bush Nominates Anti-Regulatory Zealot To Head ‘Super-Powerful’ Public Safety Office (Think Progress)
Stop Susan Dudley: The air you breathe depends on it (Public Citizen)
Dudley Do-Wrong of George Mason University (Media Transparency)
With Senate on break, Bush appoints officials: The three, including a contentious regulatory director, most likely would not have been approved by lawmakers. (Los Angeles Times)
I Am OMB and I Write the Rules (Washington Post)
On First Day Of New Congress, Koch Operatives Met With GOP Chairman Planning To Gut The Clean Air Act (Think Progress)
ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection (The Nation)
Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution (ThinkProgress)
The Koch Energy and Commerce Committee (Turley Blog)
Koch Industries multibillionaire Koch brothers bankroll attacks on climate change science and policy (Climate Science Watch)
The Most Important Think Tank You’ve Never Heard Of (Richard C. Young)
Rule Breaker: In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation (Mercatus)
Meet Koch Industries (Oil Watchdog)
Mercatus Center—Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)
Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial [REPORT] (PolluterWatch)
Koch Industries: Still Fueling Climate Denial 2011 Update (Greenpeace)
Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine (Greenpeace)
The Kochs’ Mercatus Center and Environmental Deregulation (The Green Market)
Does This Matter? Eliminating the EPA? (Watchdog Progressive)
REPORT: Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country (ThinkProgress)
FSU Accepts Funds From Charles Koch In Return For Control Over Its Academic Freedom (ThinkProgress)
Billionaire’s role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions (St. Petersburg Times)
VIDEO: Why Oil Billionaire David Koch Is Secretly Funding Astroturf To Repeal CA Clean Energy Law AB 32 (Think Progress)
Wegman scandal rocks cornerstone of climate denial (Think Progress)
Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) – Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group (Greenpeace)
Bush Obstructs EPA, OSHA, CDC Regulations (Mother Jones)
Koch Industries and Lobbying in Washington (Desmogblog)
Koch and George Mason University (Desmogblog)
Still Hiring Tree Haters (Tom Paine)
Another big time fox nominated to be gatekeeper to the henhouse (Watching the Watchers)
Charles Koch’s Assault on Academic Freedom (Mother Jones)
In Washington, Tiny Think Tank Wields Big Stick on Regulation: With White House Ex-Staffers, Mercatus Helps Zap Codes It Says Restrict Business (Wall Street Journal)
Statutory Interpretation in the Era of OIRA (Georgetown University law Center)
Testimony of Susan E. Dudley
Before the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and Nuclear Safety
Committee on Environment and Public Works
April 24, 1997
From the Republicans for Environmental Protection website: FAQ
http://www.rep.org/climate_faq.html
Talking About Climate Change
Part 1 – Science
Excerpt:
How do scientists know that climate change isn’t the result of natural causes?
The documented increase in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels over the past 250 years is very unusual. Since 1750, CO2 levels have increased far outside the range in which they fluctuated during the past 650,000 years, as documented from ice samples extracted from deep inside large ice caps. The ice samples serve as a time capsule because
they contain bubbles of ancient air that can be analyzed for CO2 content. Ratios of air molecules in those bubbles can be used to discern long-ago air temperatures. In addition, the rate of CO2 increase is highly unusual given what’s occurred before. Reconstructions of past climate conditions using proxy temperature data and computer models show that the second half of the 20th century likely was the warmest 50-year period in the past 1,300 years.
The recent increase in CO2 has been attributed to burning fossil fuels, because carbon contained in these fuels has a chemical signature that differs from carbon that originates from inorganic sources, such as volcanic eruptions.
Scientists have examined the possible role of natural causes in accounting for recent global climate change. For example, there has been a small increase in energy output from the sun during the industrial era, but it is well below the level that would be required to explain all of the documented increase in global average temperatures.
In addition, the pattern of warming, such as warming of the atmosphere’s lower levels and cooling at higher levels, is inconsistent with warming patterns that would occur if natural factors were the cause.
*****
I’ve heard that climate scientists rely on computer models for climate research. How reliable are these models?
Climate models sometimes are derided as little more than guesswork, but such criticisms are off base. Climate models are mathematical representations of climate that are based on the laws of physics. Models are continually subject to vetting and validation. Models have been tested by comparing their simulations of current climate change with actual observations, such as the faster increase in nighttime temperatures compared to daytime temperatures that has taken place.
Modeling is not the only way that climate scientists go about their work. Scientists carry out extensive field research around the world, collecting data from the atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, and ecosystems. This work expands knowledge about climate phenomena and improves understanding of the many ways that climate change will affect the natural world and human society.
I had never heard of Rob Sisson’s group Republicans for Environmental Protection before:
The philosophy of Republicans for Environmental Protection
http://www.rep.org/AboutREP/philosophy.html
We are Republicans. We share a deep concern for the environment.
We know that a healthy environment and a sound economy are both essential to our nation’s prosperity.
We believe that by working together, we can preserve both our environment and our economy for current and future generations of Americans.
We Want:
– Clean air and water
– Food free from harmful chemicals
– Clean, efficient businesses & industries
– A high quality of life in our cities & rural communities
– Strong, results-oriented enforcement of environmental laws
– Economic development for communities without the ravages of sprawl
– High priority for funding of natural resource stewardship & environmental protection
– Protection for posterity of our national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, wild lands & waters
– Effective legal protection for threatened & endangered plants & animals in their native habitats
We support and vote for Republican elected officials and candidates who share these values and concerns.
——————————————————————————–
Maybe some more reasonable voices are starting to emerge in the Republican party:
Republican Environmental Group Seeks To Put Conservation Back On The Conservative Agenda
By Tom Zeller Jr.
Huffington Post
10/20/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/republican-environment_n_1020633.html
Excerpt:
Rob Sisson, the president of the group Republicans for Environmental Protection, walks something of a lonely road these days. His group, founded in 1996, aims to restore what it calls the “great conservation tradition” of the GOP.
“We think the Republican Party has lost its way the last couple of decades,” Sisson told The Huffington Post in a recent interview. “We look at conservative talk radio and the Contract With America back in the early 1990’s as kind of the point where the party diverged from its legacy.”
That legacy reaches as far back as Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s first Republican president, who signed legislation in 1864 to protect California’s Yosemite Valley, laying the groundwork for what would become Yosemite National Park. Theodore Roosevelt, another Republican, later created hundreds of national forests, bird sanctuaries and reclamation projects during his tenure from 1901 to 1909. “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem,” Roosevelt once said. “Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Richard Nixon, Sisson noted, “signed almost every major piece of environmental legislation that we take for granted today.”
How profoundly things have changed.
It was back in July when Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) first shined a spotlight on what they called “the most anti-environment House of Representatives in history.”
At the time, they’d documented a total of 110 measures voted on by the Republican-controlled chamber that were aimed at scaling back protections for air and water, blocking climate regulation or dismantling measures designed to protect public lands.
On average, the lawmakers reported, 97 percent of Republicans voted in support of such measures.
As of this week, the number of such anti-environment proposals earning votes in the House has ballooned to 168, according to a database set up by Waxman, including one measure passed last Friday that would effectively block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating coal combustion waste — known as coal ash — as a toxic material.
Bdaman:
how can we be responsible for 30% when we emit only 3%? Does nature somehow know our CO2 from plant CO2 and then says lets leave man’s CO2 alone and let it sit there?
So nature only sequesters natural CO2 and not man made? How is that possible? Do the molecules have a made in America/China/India stamp on them?
So man emits 3% of all available CO2?
yes but it’s said man is responsible for 30% of what is in the atmosphere.
Now they want man to pay for his sins.
The lawsuits to list the polar bear as endangered were never about protecting polar bears. Instead they were nothing more than a back door approach to regulate CO2 and stop responsible development from moving forward. This is a good decision, not only for Alaska but for this nation as we look to become more energy independent.
Judge delivers ‘bittersweet’ polar bear ruling
Amanda Coyne | Oct 17, 2011
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/judge-delivers-bittersweet-polar-bear-ruling
Sullivan said that Fish and Wildlife Service failed to conduct a proper environmental review when creating the protections for the polar bear. The agency must now go back and conduct an environmental assessment of the outcome of the rule, and consider other options.
Bdaman:
“97% of CO2 is emitted by nature. How do you wish to control that.”
So man emits 3% of all available CO2? Is that true? And we think modifying our output is going to have an impact?
Why all the fuss? Are you sure that is right? We are making an economic decision based on trying to go from 3% to 2.75% CO2 output? Are you kidding me?
Ms. Elaine the focus is on CO2 that’s the mantra. Remember 350 ppm is the safe zone. I’ve already pointed that out. James Hansen expert in climate science says so.
With that said, look up how much CO2 is in the atmosphere and what percentage it makes up of all greenhouse gases. Then look up what percentage of that percentage comes from man vs nature
Hint
97% of CO2 is emitted by nature. How do you wish to control that.
http://classic.globe.gov/fsl/html/templ.cgi?carboncycleDia
Bdaman,
Thank you. I do try to read as much as I can on certain subjects before I write posts about them. I spent two weeks researching this subject.
Bdaman,
You do not agree that there are think tanks and groups funded by the Kochs who are trying to convince people that climate change is a scam and who are trying to eviscerate the EPA?
I have nothing to gain by believing that humans are contributing to global warming. I really hope the majority of climate scientists are wrong–but I don’t think they are. I live near the coast. My house is little more than a stone’s throw from a tidal estuary.
I think it best to address ways we can cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. If we could do that, wouldn’t it be good for our planet?
No ma’am and no disrespect to you either MS. Elaine. I now you put alot of hard work and reading into this post and for that I commend you. I mean that sincerely.
All of your post as a quest blogger are always well thought out, but this one particularly I can tell you did alot of research prior to making it.
Although I do not agree you did an excellent job Ms. Elaine 😉
Bdaman,
I knew you’d return to this discussion even after you said that you had given up trying to persuade those of us who are not climate change deniers that we’ve got blinders on.
You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?
😉
Sorry Ms. Elaine you should have known better when you picked the subject. 🙂
Bdaman and Bron,
I’m glad you fellows are enjoying yourselves. I suggest you two pitch in and get a 10,000 square foot prime piece of agricultural land together. Then you can show the rest of us how you can raise your own animals, fruit, and vegetables–all the food you’ll need to sustain yourselves.
For more information:
Read Solyndra Deal Violates ‘Fundamental Laws of Economics’ here.
http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=261228
What needs to be canceled is this administrations stance on everything.
n the fall of 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama made a campaign promise to jumpstart the economy with an influx of green jobs. “We’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade and harness private efforts to build a clean-energy economy,” he said. This expenditure of taxpayer dollars, averaging $15 billion a year, would then “create 5 million new jobs that pay well, and can never be outsourced.”[1]
The President has kept his promise to spend billions of borrowed dollars on green energy, but his promises that such spending would create a new, self-sufficient industry capable of providing millions of jobs for Americans have proven empty. The President’s stimulus law alone included tens of billions in new government subsidies for politically favored renewable-energy interests: $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy investments; $17 billion for the Department of Energy’s energy efficiency and renewable energy programs; $2 billion for energy-efficient battery manufacturing; and billions more on other “clean-energy” programs for a total of $80 billion.
Two years later, the President’s promise of millions of jobs stands in stark contrast with reality. As a recent report from a Bay-Area news organization made clear, green jobs predictions are “proving a pipe dream.”[2]
Reality Versus Fantasy
Why haven’t the President’s promises translated into real economic gains? The answer lies in the federal government’s unsuitability for the role the President wants it to play. Since his inauguration, the President has spoken often of the federal government as an “investor” in alternative sources of energy. But the federal government’s job is to make and enforce the rules of the road, so that markets are fair, transparent and competitive – in other words, to foster an environment that is conducive to private-sector job creation.
When the government takes on the role of “investor,” it usually does so because, according to the party in power, the “wrong” companies are winning in the free market, and the “right” companies are losing. By seeking to pick winners and losers in a dynamic and diverse economy, the government-as-investor model distorts markets, weakens the rule of law, wastes taxpayer dollars, and fails to spur sustainable job creation.
http://budget.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=261226
Bdaman:
interesting. who knows. I wouldnt cancel my electricity just yet though.
The New Breed of Energy Catalyzers: Ready for Commercialization?
On August 16, 2011, in Blog, by David Niebauer
http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-ready-for-commercialization.html
If you’ve missed the recent brouhaha over the E-Cat (which stands for Energy Catalyzer), you’re missing out on a three ring circus over a technology that will either change everything or change nothing because what is promised is, in theory, power too cheap to be worth metering.
If this device works as claimed, the world will change and not just a little but hugely and at every level of how we’re organized, how we make stuff, how we travel, and how wealth is distributed. And those changes won’t just impact the US or the Western hemisphere; they well transform the entire world because incredibly cheap energy is the ultimate game changer.
So, here’s what I’m wondering: If the E-Cat does work, how will ultra-cheap energy transform your world? Imagine the following:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/