The New American Streetcar Energy Scandal {Reader Post}

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Streetcar Energy Scandal {Reader Post}” target=”_blank”>

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Streetcar Energy Scandal {Reader Post}&Body=%20http://cleantechnica.com/2011/07/18/the-new-american-streetcar-energy-scandal/”>

July 18th, 2011 by Guest Contributor

Following up on my article and call-to-action to help revive the extremely successful clean energy and energy efficiency program PACE, here’s an excellent post by an anonymous CleanTechnica reader.

Although not about streetcars as the title suggests and not working directly from the private sector possibly a new front has been set up to fight against the successes of the alternative energy movement. Instead of re-writing the story of The Great American Streetcar Scandal for historical comparison, here it is as written by John Robbins:

Public transit in the United States has not always been so neglected. In the 1920s and 1930s, almost every town in the country had a light- rail system trolley service. Mass transit was convenient, cheap, and plentiful. But in the years between 1936 and 1950, there took place one of the sorriest events in our nation’s history–what has become known as the “Great American Streetcar Scandal.” A number of large corporations, including General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, and Phillips Petroleum, operating secretly through front organizations, conspired to purchase streetcar systems in forty- ﬁve major U.S. cities, including Detroit, New York City, Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. The consortium then proceeded to completely dismantle the trolley systems, ripping up their tracks and tearing down their overhead wires. For this, General Motors and its corporate allies were indicted in 1947 on federal antitrust charges. For two years, the workings of the conspiracy and its underlying intentions were exposed in federal court. Eventually, despite being represented by the best attorneys money could buy, the defendants were found guilty by the federal jury.

Today there is the possibility of something that might add up to a modern Great American ~~Streetcar~~ Energy Scandal. Obama is known to support alternative energy but at least four of his government agencies are opposing alternative energy in unprecedented ways.

Wind power installations are being opposed supposedly due to their impact on radar and government home loan guarantors have written a letter that has put a road block in the way of one of the most successful ways to finance alternative energy. More on the wind-power/radar story from the NYTimes:

In 2009, about 9,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects were abandoned or delayed because of radar concerns raised by the military and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a member survey by the American Wind Energy Association. That is nearly as much as the amount of wind capacity that was actually built in the same year, the trade group says.

The Defence Department could upgrade computers at the radar stations that often have less computing power than you or I have at home. These upgrades could better take in to account proposed wind energy installations. But instead of modernizing the radar facilities the government chooses to stop a major percentage of wind energy.

On the second front government is opposing the fast growing and innovative PACE programs which have recently helped many people install solar on their homes to generate their own electricity. All PACE programs have recently been ground to a stop due to a single letter written by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. More on that from Grist:

Until late spring, PACE was spreading at a steady clip: Twenty-two states had endorsed the model and encouraged municipalities to set up programs. San Francisco had just launched a program and Los Angeles was preparing for one later in the year. The Obama administration backed the model with $150 million in stimulus-act funding and an endorsement from the vice president’s Middle Class Task Force. Then Fannie and Freddie threw the nation’s first programs into confusion in May by warning lenders to stay away from properties with PACE assessments. The mortgage-finance corporations object to the liens that PACE puts on properties, which get paid off ahead of mortgages if a borrower defaults. That adds a theoretical risk into an already jittery credit market.

Does this amount to THE NEW GREAT AMERICAN ~~STREETCAR~~ ENERGY SCANDAL? Maybe there is no premeditated sabotage behind this,.. or perhaps some heavy-duty media resources could show there actually is more to these blockades, which are being put up just as alternative energy is making real headway? Perhaps there really is a concerted effort to slow a clean energy revolution and this is part of it.

One interesting place of research might be the fact that the head of Fannie and Freddie’s government regulator just prior to issuing the PACE letter, James B. Lockhart III, had ties to the streetcar scandal. He was, in the 1970s, the Assistant Treasurer of Gulf Oil (previously Standard Oil Company) in Europe and the U.S, the company convicted of the great American streetcar scandal. He has yet to be added to this government-industry revolving door list, though he seems to be a good candidate. Could he have seeded the FHA letter that took PACE out? Could he have copied tactics used to kill American streetcars to try to kill clean American energy?

One might not see big wind energy generation as a real threat to big energy companies but it’s not a stretch to see why it could be. If many people had home generation of energy, as PACE was helping to get started, then one can see why friends of oil might try to use government influence to stop PACE from growing. In the case of big wind turbines, they don’t normally help out the little guy — on the other hand, they can act as a powerful statement…. Energy is widely available all around us.

PACE is organizing right now to get its self back on track. I don’t yet know of a movement to oppose the actions that go against wind power, though. Please comment if you know of such an organized group.

Historical connection: Standard Oil of California Co. was renamed Chevron when it acquired Gulf Oil Corp., in 1984.

About the Author

Guest Contributor

Jeremy R

I’m not in to censoring anyone including Jennifer but she plagiarizes wikipedia and because her premis does not go with her copy n paste please move it to special corner of cleantechnica for “copy and pasted off topic posts”.
Jeremy R

Jennifer below, If you copy and paste from wikipedia you should give credit…

How much do you get paid by the oil companies to cast doubt on well researched opinion pieces? By the way, nothing you/wikipedia “wrote” directly addresses any of the statements in the piece you are supposedly debunking, so your employer, if you are a paid poster working on behalf of oil companies, has made a bad investment in you because some people still care about facts and can read through your sorry plagiarism.

A conspiracy is a group of people who get together to plan something, and don’t tell others about it, simple as that. That’s what oil companies did according to the federal court system so you better start pointing your finger at them instead of this article.
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/12Sgi)
Jennifer Valenzuela88

You might want to check your facts on these Oil Company Conspiracies. Chevron Corporation was originally part of the Standard Oil Co. California arm of the Octopus being formed & named amid the antitrust breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company Trust in 1911. It was one of the “Seven Sisters” that dominated the world oil industry in the early 20th century. In 1926, the company was renamed Standard Oil Co. of California or Socal. In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted SoCal a concession to find oil, and oil was found in 1938. In 1948, SoCal discovered the world’s largest oil field (Ghawar) in Saudi Arabia. SoCal’s subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, developed over years, to become the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) in 1944. In 1973, the Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO. By 1980, the company was entirely owned by the Saudis, and in 1988, the name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco).

Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil merged in 1984, the largest merger in history at that time. Under the antitrust regulation, SoCal divested many of Gulf’s operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States. SoCal changed the name to Chevron Corporation.

The business that became Gulf Oil started in 1901 with the discovery of oil at Spindletop, Texas. A group of investors came together to promote the development of a modern refinery at nearby Port Arthur to process the oil. The largest investor was William Larimer Mellon of the Pittsburgh Mellon banking family. Other investors included many of Mellon’s Pennsylvania clients as well as some Texas wildcatters (e.g., Bass & Hunt). Mellon Bank and Gulf Oil remained closely associated thereafter. The Gulf Oil Corporation itself was formed in 1907 through the amalgamation of a number of oil businesses, principally the J.M. Guffey Petroleum and Gulf Refining companies of Texas

On October 15, 2000 Chevron announced it would acquire Texaco (NYSE: TX) creating the second largest oil company in the United States and the world’s fourth-largest publicly traded oil company with a combined market value of approximately $95 billion. On October 9, 2001, the shareholders of Chevron and Texaco voted to approve the merger creating ChevronTexaco. The deal was valued at $45 billion.

On May 9, 2005, ChevronTexaco announced it would drop the Texaco moniker and return to the Chevron name. Texaco remains as a brand under the Chevron Corporation.

On April 4, 2005, Chevron announced it planned to purchase Unocal Corporation (NYSE: UCL) for $18.4 billion increasing the company’s petroleum and natural gas reserves by about 15 percent. On August 10, 2005, Unocal Corporation shareholders approved Chevron’s acquisition of the company. The deal was valued at $18 billion. Because of Unocal’s large South East Asian geothermal operations, Chevron became the world’s largest producer of geothermal energy.

In July 2010, Chevron ended retail operations in the Mid Atlantic US, removing the Chevron and Texaco names from 1,100 stations in Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and parts of Tennessee.

On November 9, 2010, Chevron announced it would acquire Pennsylvania based Atlas Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: ATLS) for $3.2 billion in cash and an additional $1.1 billion in existing debt owed by Atlas. On February 18, 2011, the shareholders of Atlas energy voted to approve the merger.
- Jeremy R
  
  Jennifer, If you copy and paste from wikipedia you should give credit…
  
  How much do you get paid by the oil companies to cast doubt on well researched opinion pieces? By the way, nothing you/wikipedia “wrote” directly addresses any of the statements in the piece you are supposedly debunking, so your employer, if you are a paid poster working on behalf of oil companies, has made a bad investment in you because some people still care about facts and can read through your sorry plagiarism.
  
  A conspiracy is a group of people who get together to plan something, and don’t tell others about it, simple as that. That’s what oil companies did according to the federal court system so you better start pointing your finger at them instead of this article.
Uncle B

Canadian must Read: Prevent this from happening in Canda! Should the corporatist prime minister Harper lean even slightly in this direction, cut him off at the knees! Join the huge minority that voted NDP, and slam the country into a Socialist state, even respecting Corpoarations but limiting their powers to business, and shutting them out of domestic issues. Can we do it? As Pierre Trudeau once said when challenged this wa, ‘Just watch me!” Canda is a stron social democracy, and always takes care of her people first, Don’t forget that Yankee Doodle! We have the very best social safety net in the world, and we intend keeping it that way! You should do the same!
Capt. Obvious

About radar clutter from windmills: it’s not as easy as buying new (cheap) computers and plugging them in. Somebody has to design, test, build, and install new tracker/clutter filters; and maybe higher bandwidth radars will be needed, to provide the range resolution to see the mills and discriminate between them and planes and weather. It’s all a tradeoff. And we’re talking about national defense and flying safety.
- Jeremy
  
  Capt Obvious points out that instead of investing in solutions to clear up radar clutter that allow for more energy generation and greater energy security the defense dept instead decides to invest in putting up road blocks. Where is the logic in that approach?
- Ernst
  
  Every other nation from Germany to China seems to be able to deal with the threat from windmills on their national security. Are we become just totally incapable or absolutely paranoid? Either way, God help America!
  - Anonymous
    
    I think both..