Not World Changing

The nondescript WorldChanging website which correctly called out the Competitive Enterprise Institute for their "Carbon dioxide - they call it pollution. We call it life" ads in 2006 just ruined all their credibility when staff writer Ben Block published an email contribution from chicken-entrail-brain Myron Ebell in his article India Joins International Renewable Energy Agency:

Critics in the United States have questioned whether IRENA [the International Renewable Energy Agency] could in fact help India expand its renewable energy capacity. "Experience proves that such agencies almost always quickly become bureaucracies that are effective only at perpetuating themselves and that often become obstacles to progress," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, in an e-mail.

Rather than create an institution with permanent positions, Ebell said that ad-hoc international collaborations such as the Asia-Pacific Partnership have proven useful in exchanging clean energy technologies.

Setting aside the fact that Ebell is clearly describing the Competitive Enterprise Institute itself -- a self-perpetuating organization whose sole purpose is to be an obstacle to progress -- just what the hell does anyone think he knows about anything? Ben Block might as well have phoned up a pissed tramp in the west end of Chicago. Or an Exxon executive who simply doesn't want any renewable energy to be successful.

Idiot!

Ebell also shows up in this LA Times article by Richard Simon about how the declaration of National Monument lands in Southern California would block the development of solar and wind energy projects:

Myron Ebell, an energy expert with the pro-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, called Feinstein's effort "just the first example of how hard it is going to be to realize President Obama's dream of a green-energy economy."

Now, Myron has long fumed about the prevention of strip mining and oil drilling in national parks, and it's one of his missions to equate those activities to the reasonably trivial land damage caused by setting up a wind farm. They're not even close. It's like comparing going to the dentist to open heart surgery.

But there's going to be room to lie about the issues and give soundbytes that will endlessly echo through the empty chambers of right-wing minds. It would just help if reporters with self-respect stopped taking quotes from him. His evil corporate backers (now likely to be the American coal industry) pay him by the word. In a just world, there would be no jobs for work like his. You reporters have it in your power to make it end.