Written Remarks for a Hearing of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, Dirksen Senate Office Building, February 25, 2014. 

Good afternoon.

The focus of this hearing is on the economic benefits of ecosystems and wildlife and how they “are valuable to a wide range of industries,” including tourism. The purpose is also to examine “how the Administration is preparing to protect” ecosystems “in a changing climate.”

February 26 2014
Washington Examiner

When it comes to energy policy, the European Union -- and Germany in particular -- have provided the perfect model. Indeed, if U.S. policymakers want to dramatically increase energy prices, destroy jobs and impose hardship on industry, then they should follow the EU's lead.

January 28, 2014
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What was notable about the last night’s State of the Union address with regard to energy was not what the president said, it was what he did not say. 

We heard the usual tired bromides. It only took four paragraphs before the inevitable mention of the evils of “foreign oil.” It was only a bit longer before President Obama uttered the execrable phrase that has been a prerequisite for every US president since Richard Nixon: “energy independence.” 

December 30, 2013
National Review Online

Just when it seemed the hype over biofuels was finally dying down, the New York Times gave biofuel producers a Christmas present.

On Christmas Day, on the front page of the newspaper’s business section, the Times published a piece titled “Jet Fuel by the Acre.” Written by Todd Woody, the article touted SGB, a San Diego–based company that has, it says, “succeeded in domesticating jatropha.” The subhead claims, “A start-up cracks the code to turn a bush into fuel.”

December 19, 2013
National Review Online

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 — one of the most pork-filled bits of federal energy legislation ever passed by Congress — continues to haunt us.

December 9, 2013
National Review Online

We have to kill eagles in order to save them.

That’s now the official policy of the U.S. Interior Department. On Friday, the agency announced that it would grant some wind-energy companies permits that will allow them to kill or injure bald and golden eagles for up to 30 years without penalty.

December 2, 2013
Energy Tribune

Michael J. Economides, an international authority on petroleum engineering, died late Saturday evening while onboard a jetliner bound for Santiago, Chile. He was 64.

November 28, 2013
Wall Street Journal

The Justice Department announced late last week that a subsidiary of Duke Energy has agreed to pay $1 million for killing golden eagles and other federally protected birds at two of the company's wind projects in Wyoming. The guilty plea was a long-overdue victory for the rule of law and a sign that green energy might be going out of vogue.

November 26, 2013
National Review Online

For years, the wind-energy sector and renewable-energy advocates have repeatedly claimed that wind turbines are essential to the fight against carbon dioxide emissions and catastrophic climate change. Here’s the reality: Wind turbines are nothing more than climate-change scarecrows.

November 14, 2013
National Review Online

Forty years have passed since the OPEC oil embargo of 1973. In that time span, the United States has increased its population by about half, nearly tripled its economic output, and nearly doubled its per capita GDP. While doing so, the U.S. has increased its oil consumption by just 7 percent.

October 10, 2013
Wall Street Journal

For some environmentalists, the threat of climate change is so great that we must allow wind turbines to kill bald and golden eagles. The argument I've heard is that renewables, including wind energy, will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Less carbon dioxide reduces the threat posed by climate change, which benefits eagles and other wildlife.

October 10, 2013
Bloomberg

Forty years ago this month, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an embargo on oil exports to the U.S. as retaliation for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. It would last only five months, but it haunts U.S. energy policy to this day.

September 23, 2013
National Review Online

On Friday, the EPA finally unveiled its long-awaited rules for new coal-fired power plants. The agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy, has claimed that the new rules “will provide certainty for the future of new coal.”

September 20, 2013
Bloomberg

This month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will begin releasing its fifth assessment report. Like earlier reports, it will undoubtedly lead to more calls to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide worldwide.

September 12, 2013
National Review Online

No president in modern American history has bashed the oil and gas industry more than Barack Obama. And none has benefited from that industry more.

Proving that last sentence is easy. It requires only that we imagine what world oil prices — and the U.S. economy — would look like in the absence of the shale gale, the multi-state surge in domestic oil and gas production of the past few years, as drillers have figured out how to produce vast quantities of methane and liquids from shale deposits.

August 8, 2013
National Review Online

Keep the poor in the dark: That’s the aim of some of the world’s biggest and most influential environmental groups. And last month, both the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the World Bank helped advance it. Out of concern for climate change, they announced, they would restrict financing for coal-fired power plants.

July 8, 2013
National Review Online

Africans can burn coal. Americans can’t.

That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the Obama administration’s most recent forays into energy policy.

June 24, 2013
National Review Online

The gulf between the hard realities of the global energy market and the Obama administration’s energy policies grows wider by the day.

On Wednesday, Heather Zichal, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change, told a group of reporters that Obama, knowing that climate change is “a legacy issue,” will soon issue new rules to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity-generation plants. “After all that we’ve done, after all that historic progress in the first four years, we are well poised to take meaningful action for the second term,” Zichal said.

June 11, 2013
National Review Online

The Goliath of the wind-energy business is suing David. The defendant is Esther Wrightman, an activist and mother of two from the tiny town of Kerwood, Ontario, which sits roughly halfway between Detroit and Toronto.

Wrightman, 32, has angered the Florida-based NextEra Energy (market capitalization: $32 billion) by starting a couple of bare-bones websites, ontariowindresistance.org and mlwindaction.org, as well as a YouTube channel, which she uses to lampoon the company. In its lawsuit, filed on May 1, NextEra claims that Wrightman has misused its logo and libeled the company by calling it “NexTerror” and “NextError.” And while the company doesn’t specify the amount of damages it seeks from Wrightman, it says that it will donate any proceeds from the litigation to United Way.

Amid the myriad tragedies and heartache caused by the Second Iraq War, the death of Col. Westhusing is among the saddest and most senseless. I have been asked by a number of people who knew Col. Westhusing for some of the documents that I obtained from the Defense Department via the Freedom of Information Act over the course of my year-long inquiry into his suicide. Rather than distribute paper copies, it makes sense to make them available in electronic form.

If you are interested in my writings on Westhusing from '07 and '08, see here and here. 

Herewith, a batch of the key documents, in PDF:
1. Anonymous letter sent to Col. Westhusing in May 2005 regarding alleged misconduct by contractors working for the U.S. military in Iraq.
2. June 17, 2005 interview of Westhusing's widow, Michelle, by Army investigators.
3. Sworn statements from people who knew Col. Westhusing.
4. Bulk of the report done by the Army's Inspector General.
5. Bulk of the report done Army Criminal Investigation Command.