Fossil fuel energy prices are down right now due to the recession suppressing demand, but the mid- and long-term trend is up. Coal, oil, natural gas—all up. If we do nothing, energy will keep getting more expensive for Americans, and it will impact the poor disproportionately.
The progressive proposal is to price carbon, strengthen efficiency regulations, and invest in green energy and infrastructure. This will produce a short-term rise in energy prices followed by a mid- and long-term stabilization and reduction as renewables and efficiency scale up.
Conservatives react with outrage to the notion of policy that will produce an increase in energy prices, of any duration.
But ... what’s their alternative? Energy prices are going up regardless. What’s their solution to that problem?
I sincerely don’t understand. Someone explain it to me.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Comments
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GRLCowan Posted 3:51 am
04 Mar 2009
Is there anything missing from your suggested remedies that might give that impression?
(How fire can be domesticated)
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davedenali Posted 4:08 am
04 Mar 2009
But ... what's their alternative? Energy prices are going up regardless. What's their solution to that problem?
I sincerely don't understand. Someone explain it to me."
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I wouldn't expend a lot of calories trying to fathom conservative thought. Remember, these are the people who gave us James Inhofe as Senate Environment Chair and had us borrow a couple trillion to finance tax cuts for the rich. They are hoping voters will be angry over a cap and auction bill, that R's can link Dems to higher energy prices and win back some of the 55 or so House seats they've lost as a result of their staggering incompetence and utter intellectual bankruptcy.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:33 am
04 Mar 2009
2...Build demonstration plants of every technology as it becomes possible. If the first one fails, build improved models until the technology is proven to be useful or not.
3...Publish all the data.
4...Eliminate all subsidies. Note that R&D and subsidies are two completely different things. With R&D there is always the potential for a dramatic breakthrough that will change everything. Not so with subsidies.
5...Include all external costs for all technologies.
6...Allow the cost of energy to rise or fall to its real value on a totally level field.
7...Allow a well informed private sector of individuals and corporations to select the best technology for mass production.
This process will produce the best solution, whatever it is, in the shortest time.
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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Ted Clayton Posted 5:32 am
04 Mar 2009
Reduced economic activity. Depressed demand for energy. Fiscal worry, moribund consumer & professional confidence, fiscal conservatism (higher savings, reduced discretionary (consumer) spending.
If an average person gets in financial trouble, who is going to recommend he borrow & spend his way out of it? That's just digging himself further into the hole ... which is effectively what the country is doing under the current plan.
There were plenty of people who said, before the big economic crash, "We're headed for a big economic crash". But the game was fun enough for enough of us, that the herd went along with the folly (er, 'plan').
Now, we're spending money like there's no tomorrow, pressuring other nations to hold our increasingly worthless notes. But they have increasingly little choice, since they are already holding so much of our paper, that to let it go into freefall means the paper loses most of it's value. We got 'em by the short-hairs.
The sensible read it, our current actions will lead to further economic weakness & adversity, on-going & down the road.
That keeps folks worried & prudent. Growth & demand slow to a crawl ... Russia is no longer getting the fat oil-money ... neither is Chavez, the Chiefdoms in Nigeria, the Middle East or Persian Gulf. Their still pumpin', but they ain't getting fat on it.
The unfortunate outcome of this policy, from the view of CO2 activism, is that energy does not go to high prices and stay there. We may do some 'roller-coastering' ... regaining some economic vigor, demand goes back up some, but then prices go too high, contraction sets in, and we crash back down.
It looks, though, like it is too easy to set the game up so folks become chronically pessimistic about the economy, and foreign oil etc thus remains too cheap to support an extensive conversion to green renewables.
Politicos will be able to use declining energy-usage to trumpet declining CO2 emission. "Hurray! We saved the world!"
No, I think the alternative is prolonged, sustained, 'engineered' economic stagnation.
Obama probably knew before the election, he'd be a one-term President.
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lgcarey Posted 9:42 am
04 Mar 2009
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