Amazing things are happening in Washington!
This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
“There are astounding new programs underway in Washington at this time”.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE- I find it utterly amazing that our government has been able to create a national energy policy which is cleverly designed to lead our nation into complete energy independence from the shackles of our total dependency on Mideast Oil. Their policies are so cleverly designed that I am unable to completely understand how they work at this time.
I am not sure how you can gain complete energy independence while forcing the nation to discontinue use of its most abundant energy resource, coal. We plan to penalize and heavily tax any company, power plant, or other entity which dares to attempt to use this horrible energy source which threatens the “green” movement. Also, ignore the fact that a coal burning energy plant is coming on line each week in China.
Also, we have a cleverly designed national energy policy which prohibits the construction of any new nuclear power plants anywhere in the nation. Again, this horrible source of energy could be mismanaged and damage occur to our “green” movement. Also, ignore the fact that nuclear plants are being built in many other nations which share our planet.
Also, we have a cleverly designed national energy policy which will not allow oil drilling on known vast reserves of oil in wastelands of Alaska and in numerous off shore sites. We fear the migratory patterns of the caribou will be impacted in Alaska, and tourism might suffer in Florida.
Thus the “green” movement again stops use of these energy reserves.
Also we have a cleverly designed national energy policy which denies the mining of the vast oil shale reserves which exist in our rocky mountains. Again, the “green” movement doesn’t want our mountains scraped.
The same energy concepts will not allow any domestic refineries to be expanded or new refineries to be built. Again, the “green” movement prohibits any thought of increasing the presence of these smelly, smoking, job producing plants.
So how can we reduce our critical dependence on outside sources of energy if we follow the edicts of the “greenies” and do not use any of our natural resources to solve the problem? I think I finally have figured out what their plan….their national energy policy…really is.
Their solution is
not to increase
our supply of energy….
it is instead to reduce our demand for it!
The concept is diabolical in its simplicity.
If we destroy enough of our industrial complex and there are no longer any factories fouling our industrial parks, and there are no other energy consuming industrial operations in existence within our borders, the power they consume will no longer be required, thus reducing our demand and simultaneously reducing our dependence on foreign sources. Clever!!
Secondly, if we take all of the disposable income away from the population by taking away all of their jobs, only leaving low paying service type jobs, and then we simultaneously overburden them with taxes, fees, fines, and penalties, they will no longer have the funds needed to buy vehicles, to purchase gasoline, and to take trips in gas consuming vehicles. Thus, as the society becomes more and more destitute, the demand for foreign oil will drop. How Amazingly Astute!
They have decided that replacing a national population fouled with prosperity, net worth, decadent spending, and wealth and replacing it with a population uniformly totally dependent on a huge Central Government for all of their needs, they can solve our energy problems. Through creating a society more concerned with day to day survival than it is concerned with travel, air conditioning, large homes, extra automobiles, and other unnecessary luxuries, the demand for all energy will automatically fall.
To insure this concept works, they can also make the cost of electricity become so high that no ordinary citizen can afford to have a well lighted house, use air conditioning, or other unessential consumption of electrical energy. This can be accomplished through programs such as “Cap and Trade” which will place heavy taxes on the electrical companies, the cost of which will then be passed on to the consumers in their monthly bills.
Thus the real national energy policy for our government has become a quest to reduce demand instead of increasing supplies. How foolish we have all been! All we had to do was destroy our national economy and remove all wealth…the solution was so simple
Rudiments & Odds & Ends Worth Mentioning
● The “Cash for Clunkers” program has created a small, temporary increase in demand for new cars. This is helping some consumers purchase a new car by paying them more than their old car was worth as a trade in, it is helping struggling dealers, helping the auto unions, and is helping the government owned automobile companies. However, it is actually throwing away future tax dollars of our great grandchildren. You can not pay more than something is worth and then destroy what you bought… and be doing something beneficial in the long run. Of course, it supposedly is also helping the “green” movement.
● Congressman Boyd will be coming home soon. I understand the “Tea Party” group of Concerned American Patriots is eagerly awaiting his first public appearance in our area. I don’t think they feel he has been “Getting It Right” in Washington. These events should create some interesting news stories.
● Florida has a new sunshine web site which is supposed to show state spending. It is www.MyFloridaCFO.com/SunshineSpending.
● Our legislators helped balance the State Budget by increasing our fees and taxes by $2 billion. Meanwhile, the State buildings in Tallahassee are still overflowing with bureaucrats over-administering unnecessary programs….and drawing government paychecks and generous benefits.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hatcher Publications.
Some thoughts from a Danish point of view:
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. is talking about a very low commitment -- maybe cutting emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. That is much less than what the European Union wants, and certainly much less than what most of the environmental groups want. It is also going to be very, very hard for the U.S. to fulfill even that small promise. The Senate overwhelmingly declared in a vote on March 31 that any climate-change legislation considered by Congress must decrease greenhouse gas emissions "without increasing electricity or gasoline prices." Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has even promised that energy prices won't go up. Take that seriously, and you have no hope of limiting demand for energy.
Global warming is definitely a problem, and we should definitely do something. But we shouldn't do just anything -- we should do the smart thing. The main difficulty with global warming is that fossil fuels are not only fairly cheap, they also make this world so rich and so good to live in by providing us with all the amenities that we see around us: light, heat, the ability to propel ourselves to many different places. So we aren't going to give up fossil fuels without having a great alternative. Right now there is no good alternative to fossil fuels. And so the Chinese and the Indians and everybody else -- but also the Americans and the Europeans -- will keep on burning a lot of fossil fuels.
Everybody seems to be saying, let's make carbon-emitting fossil fuels so expensive, nobody will want to use them. But that is bound to fail. So rather than making fossil fuels so expensive, we should try to make green energy so cheap that everybody will want to use it. That means investing in research and development to get better technologies available for 2020, but especially for 2040 and afterward. Investing in making solar panels so cheap that even China and India will want to buy them.
It is fine to impose a carbon tax, but it would be largely symbolic. According to the most authoritative study, the damage from a ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is probably around $7. So you should definitely tax carbon at a rate of $7 per ton, which comes to 6 cents per gallon of gasoline. The market has already imposed a much larger tax. We have already seen oil at more than $100 a barrel, and that didn't stop the world from using oil. Americans have already paid $4 a gallon at the pump (In Europe it is presently 8$ a gallon), and that didn't stop any of us from driving our cars
The idea of imposing a large carbon tax and thereby thinking you are going to fix the problem is flawed in many different ways. First of all, we don't seem to be willing to do it. Even if we did, it would have a huge negative impact on the global economy. And it would have a negligible effect on curbing our emissions, because we have already seen how inelastic our demand is.
But you can use the money raised to help finance research and development into green alternatives. That is the treaty we would like to see in Copenhagen in December. Every nation would promise to spend 0.05% of GDP on research and development on non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. This would be about $7 billion for the U.S. It would be about $30 billion for the entire world. We could easily get everybody on-board because it is a fairly low amount. And it would have a much greater chance of dealing with climate change in the long run, because it will focus on making alternative technology so cheap that everybody would want to use it.
To be continued
Continued
ReplyDeleteCap-and-trade is essentially a system for trading permits to emit gases, like carbon dioxide, that are blamed for global warming. The problem is that it makes possible immense amounts of gaming the system through political lobbying. Because typically, most of these permits are given away, which is one of the big things the Obama Administration is talking about right now. The companies that had the most benefit from Kyoto in Europe were the energy companies. That is because, at least for the first three or four years, these companies got all the permits to pollute, but the companies still charged their customers -- me and everybody else. So they made tens of billions of euros each year from climate-change policies. Not surprisingly, they are very much in favor of these policies, but it doesn't mean that they are smart policies.
According to the thousands of scientists the U.N. asked to evaluate the data, the sea-level rise between now and 2100 will be somewhere between six inches and two feet -- not 20 feet --with most estimates around one foot. Now, we have already seen a foot of sea-level rise over the last 150 years, so it will be a bit faster by 2100. But it certainly gives you perspective. Was the 20th century marked particularly by the fact that the sea level rose? Well, there were two world wars, the suffrage of women, the internal-combustion engine, the IT revolution -- and the sea level rose. Let's hope the 21st century sees no world wars, but do you think the sea-level rise will be any more important? That doesn't mean it isn't a problem, but it's a problem we can deal with.
New York City actually has more land mass than it used to, even though the sea level rose. Holland has been way below sea level for centuries, on the order of 10 to 12 feet below sea level for about 60% of the Dutch, and with no visible decrease in their quality of life. Take the Republic of Maldives, an island country consisting of a group of atolls. The sea level rise would mean a 77% land-loss for the Maldives, worth more than that country's entire gross domestic product. But protection against the sea will cost only about 0.4% of GDP, which makes almost every square foot worth saving.
And if it really were true that Manhattan will be 20 feet underwater in 10 years, there would be no time to reverse global warming anyway. Once Manhattanites witness the first three feet of sea-level rise in three years, the only sane thing would be to build dikes. And let's remember that you don't have to see the dikes. The Dutch don't normally see their dikes or feel surrounded by them. Not that many of the scientists who have looked at the data expect that kind of catastrophe.
The United Nations science consensus expects temperature increases of three to seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, which the world can deal with, especially if the world is allowed to grow richer between now and then. And while it is important to admit that there is no guaranteeing the future, catastrophe from global warming is just one of many imaginable catastrophes. There are plenty of other scary scenarios out there in the world, certainly including the fact that we could see a new ice age. And if we allow ourselves to say anything and everything could happen, then we should ask how we can best protect ourselves against all these different catastrophes that could come along. We do know that rich, well-structured, robust societies deal much better with catastrophe than weak, poorly structured societies. We also know the way to build those societies isn't to cripple the global economy by forcing it off fossil fuels before viable alternatives are available.
Meanwhile, three-fourths of the world's people live in abject poverty, while some sit and fret about the possible end of the world in 100 years. For too many of those others, the world ends tomorrow.
To be continued
Continued
ReplyDeleteTake deaths caused by temperature extremes -- a good example of how we get very biased reporting. Everybody says when temperatures rise, you are going to get more heat waves and therefore you are going to get more heat deaths. That is absolutely true. But you also have to remember that as temperatures rise, you are also going to get fewer cold waves. While warming will mean about 400,000 more heat-related deaths globally, it will mean 1.8 million fewer cold-related deaths, according to the only peer-reviewed global estimate, published in Ecological Economics, something that is rarely reported. That is partly because warming will disproportionately cause warmer winters rather than hotter summers.
And when it comes to heat deaths, cutting carbon emissions is an incredibly costly and ineffective way to help people who will die more from heat. If we care about heat deaths we should make sure that people don't get so hot in the summer in the heat waves. If we plant more trees, if we make more water and air-conditioning available, if we maintain more light surfaces -- for instance, by painting the tarmac white -- we could actually save far more lives from extremes of heat much faster and more cheaply.
But the claim that the damage to sea life from ocean acidification due to carbon dioxide could be catastrophic for marine life seems greatly exaggerated, since we know there have been vastly higher carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere some 50 to 500 million years ago, at a time when the ocean was very rich in marine life. And even if we imagine such a catastrophe could happen, let's get a grip on its human impact. We get about 1% of our calories from the seas and about 5% of our protein. We mainly depend on the land for our food, and land-based productivity will be growing dramatically.
Since the sensational always goes over better than the merely sensible, stories in the media play into the stereotype of global warming. There is much more sizzle in saying the world is going to come to an end than there is to saying, it is a bit of a problem and we need to fix it smartly, but that is it. The scary stories also appeal to the visceral hatred of materialism harbored by many, even when they are materialist in their own habits.
It is much easier to find a real person who died in the heat wave in 2003 in Paris, and tell that story. It is much harder to tell a compelling story about a person who didn't die from cold in Paris in the winter of 2003. So it is often much easier to show all the problems from global warming, and very much harder to show all the distributed benefits from pursuing more sensible policies.
Finally, politicians obviously garner a lot of support by saying we want to save the planet much more than they garner support if they talk about making smart, simple policies that might also be politically difficult to get through. Essentially, they get to promise they are going to cut emissions in 2020 or 2050 -- when they are not going to be politicians any longer.
Al Gore talks about global warming as our generational mission. He asks how we want to be remembered by our kids and grandkids. Well, why would anyone want to be remembered for having spent $180 billion to do virtually no good a hundred years from now, when less than half that sum could fix virtually all major problems today? With better information, most of us would have no difficulty choosing how we want to be remembered.
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