Recession's Green Lining: Energy Conservation!

Maybe George W. Bush really had an environmental agenda: his laissez-faire non-management of the economy led us into recession, but it also led us to real energy conservation. Factory use of natural gas is projected to drop 8.6% this year. Consumption of electricity may fall 2.6% this year, better than last year's 1.6% drop and the first back-to-back declines since 1949. Demand for all petrofuels in the U.S. dropped 7.1% last year.

(Note for Hyperion fans: the drop in gasoline consumption has driven refiner Flying J Inc. to bankruptcy and shuttered its Bakersfield refinery. That same article reports Sunoco is trying to sell a refinery in Tulsa and will shut it down if it can't find a buyer. As many of us saw last year, the market for Hyperion's "green" refinery in Elk Point is shrinking fast.)

Industrial energy usage usually tracks closely with the economic cycle, but this recession has brought an unusual drop in energy usage in the residential and commercial as well. This reduction in energy usage at the individual represents a laudable frugality, a new thriftiness that more observers think will remain the norm even after we fix this recession.

After a decade of SUV-mania, credit-card bingeing, and home-equity hijinks, we needed a good economic kick in the pants to remind us how to manage our fuel and our finances. If we can learn our lesson and leave more resources in the bank for future generations, the Bush recession may actually reflect well on its progenitor.

Bucks Before Birds: Farmers to Plow Almost Half of SD CRP Acres

While I lament the loss of a couple dozen good trees, South Dakota is on pace to lose 44% of the wildlife habitat previously held in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Patrick Morrison reports in yesterday's Yankton Press & Dakotan that "300,000 acres of CRP were converted to production ground last year, reducing the overall number of CRP acres to 1.2 million." Biologist Chad Switzer of Game Fish and Parks estimates farmers will convert another 120,000 acres this year and 240,000 next. That's 660,000 acres -- over a thousand square miles, equivalent to almost all the land in Lake and Moody Counties -- where pheasants won't be able to nest, breed, or roost as they did just two years ago.

Why the decrease? Simple economics: with farm prices up thanks to ethanol and Asian demand, CRP just doesn't pay like it used to. And with America's failed energy policy driving up costs for fuel and fertilizer, farmers have to put short-term payoffs over long-term habitat protection

Oh well -- with ammo prices going up 50% or more, you don't want to shoot as many birds anyway, did you?