Ezra Levant on what environmental activists know and how they get paid to protest

The story is available here.

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Is the world really overcrowded?: Sure doesn't look like it

If the world's population was concentrated in Texas at the same concentration as NYC, would we say that the world had no room for other people?  Hardly.

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Chevrolet Volt sales continue slow, GM cuts price by $5,000, but was already losing money on each sold before price cut

$7,500 tax credit, pricing it so low that they are losing money on each car, and they still couldn't sell more than 30,000 in 2012.  From Bloomberg:

GM loses money on each Volt it sells while not disclosing a specific figure. The model, which is eligible for a $7,500 U.S. tax credit, was introduced in 2010 and has struggled to meet some sales targets. Volt is GM’s flagship car for its efforts to have about 500,000 vehicles on the road by 2017 with some form of electrification. The car can travel 38 miles (61 kilometers) on battery power before a gasoline engine engages. . . . 

Leaf sales accelerated this year after Nissan Motor Co. (7201) in January added an S version of the Leaf that’s cheaper than the SV and SL models. Unlike the Volt, the Leaf has no extended range engine. Leaf sales more than tripled to 11,703 through July from 3,543 during the same period a year earlier, outselling Volt in the U.S. by 60 vehicles. . . . 

Even with the accolades, the car struggled to garner the kinds of sales sought by Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson, who had forecast global Volt sales of 60,000 in 2012, before settling for about half that amount. 

In late April, Akerson said GM was working to cut the price of producing the Volt by as much as $10,000 each without removing features for the next-generation version which he indicated could come out in 2015 or 2016. . . .

Whatever one thinks of electric cars the Volt has been a waste of taxpayer dollars with government subsidies and a product of government control following the bankruptcy.

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Obama's EPA Regulatory Overreach in One Diagram

Under Obama, the EPA has disapproved state proposals at an astounding rate.   The number of regulatory disapprovals under Obama's first four years is greater than the number during the preceding 12 years combined.  Even more amazing is the number of times that the EPA has taken over state regulatory programs is eight times greater than that during the entire preceding 12 years (including four of those under Clinton).  The information was put together by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

The ALEC report documents the huge costs of the EPA's intervention and shows the trivial benefits produced by it.  Because the EPA has more mandates than it can handle, the EPA has replaced state participation with that of environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club.

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Environmentalists excited: It takes 63% longer to fly a single-seat solar plane from Cincinnati to DC than to drive

The fastest route for cars between Cincinnati and Dulles International Airport (IAD) outside DC is hardly a straight line.  But despite that disadvantage the new solar plane that environmentalists are excited that a solar powered plane that can hold nothing more than the pilot took 14 hours and 4 minutes.  The car, which you could load down with all sorts of cargo, would take 8 hours and 37 minutes.  To put it differently, the solar plane took 63 percent longer to make the trip -- non-stop, not a very fun trip.  The trip apparently averaged 30.9 miles per hour over the 435 miles (not exactly the "around 40 mph" noted in the article).  Can the AP do division to check out the facts that they are given?  Possibly environmentalists simply don't value people's time.  From the AP:

. . . Solar Impulse's website said the aircraft with its massive wings and thousands of photovoltaic cells "gracefully touched down" at 12:15 a.m. EDT after 14 hours and four minutes of flight from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dulles in Washington's Virginia suburbs. . . . 

It's the first bid by a solar plane capable of being airborne day and night without fuel to fly across the U.S, at speeds reaching about 40 mph. The flight originated from San Francisco via Arizona, Texas, Missouri and Ohio onward to Dulles with stops of several days in cities along the way. 

Organizers said in a blog post early Sunday that Piccard soared across the Appalachian mountains on a 435-mile (700-kilometer) course from Cincinnati to the Washington area, averaging 31 mph (50 kph). It was the second phase of a leg that began in St. Louis. 

The plane, considered the world's most advanced sun-powered aircraft, is powered by about 12,000 photovoltaic cells that cover its enormous wings and charge its batteries during the day. The single-seat Solar Impulse flies around 40 mph and can't go through clouds; weighing about as much as a car, the aircraft also took longer than a car to complete the journey from Ohio to the East Coast. . . . .

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The Obama administration believes everyone will still be buying gasoline powered cars despite massive government subsidies, so why are they spending this money

Here is an amazing claim that despite all the massive government subsidies and regulations, almost all the cars being sold two decades will now will still be powered by gasoline.  I have have little fiath in such long term predictions, but the amazing thing is that prediction comes from the Obama administration.  Even they believe that with all their massive subsidies, everything will still be gasoline powered.  From the Detroit News:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that even in 2035, more than 99 percent of cars and trucks sold will still have internal combustion engines. . . .

Here is a little more from the piece:

. . . . But a good look at the latest advances in the gasoline-powered engine —and those on the horizon — jars this opinion, and the surge in U.S. oil production from shale drilling further refutes the idea that conventional engines are old technology. 

Already powering more than 230 million cars in the United States, internal combustion engines have the potential to become substantially more efficient, while providing economic and environmental benefits that extend well beyond the money consumers save at the pump. 

Imagine if your car uses advanced computing to control fuel injection far more precisely than before, improving the fuel efficiency of big cars by more than 15 percent. Or what if your car is able to knock another 30 percent off fuel consumption — and corresponding greenhouse-gas emissions — by partly cooling hot exhaust gas before it is pumped into the engine? . . . 

Don’t expect all of these technological advances in next year’s models, but automakers expect to hit their fuel economy targets over the next decade, rising from about 32 miles-per-gallon today to about 51 by 2025. Importantly, they are achieving technological breakthroughs with the internal combustion engine on their own, without the government subsidies that support the development of electric vehicles. For now, the most cost-effective technology changes in the near term are improvements in conventional cars — advanced internal combustion engines and diesel engines — that will reduce our energy consumption and enhance energy security. . . .

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President of an electric car company advocates a higher tax on gasoline

Isn't this obviously self serving?  So does anybody believe that these environmental firms aren't pushing for public policy that increase their profits?  From The Hill newspaper:

Tesla Automotive CEO and co-founder Elon Musk said climate advocates need to “reframe” the argument on climate science. . . .
Musk also said he had a solution — albeit one Republicans have outright rejected — for reducing carbon emissions.
“The thing they’ve got to do is try to put a tax on carbon,” he said, inducing cheers. . . .

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