There's a growing tension between the subsidy-happy proclivities of Congress and its self-imposed mandate to reduce carbon emissions. You just can't spend all the available federal dollars on ethanol and CTL and expect to reduce emissions.
Bills like this one, introduced by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), are going to bring that tension to a head:
A bill about to be introduced in the Senate would push utilities to generate drastically more of their power -- 15%, compared with the current 2% -- from sources such as wind or the sun by 2020. While three similar measures have died after passing the Senate, this one has powerful bipartisan support.
Here's the key: the bill mandates renewable sources, and by renewable Bingaman really seems to mean renewable, not "alternative." Naturally this drives the bought-and-paid-for Congresscritters from dirty-energy states nuts. They, says the WSJ with a straight face, "say carbon-dioxide emissions ... could be reduced more effectively by getting more power from nuclear plants and coal-fired plants that bury their carbon-dioxide emissions." Yeah.
Kevin Drum puts it well:
What are we going to do? Grant billions of dollars of subsidies to CL technology and then drive them all out of business with a carbon tax? That's some great policymaking there.
Jeebus. Are the electoral votes in Montana and West Virginia that important? What am I missing here?
Money. Money money money. Money and entrenched power. But mostly money.
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Comments
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dayve311 Posted 8:06 am
30 May 2007
Old money is like a virus that just won't die. The newer generations have to stop allowing money to be the basis of all their decisions. Especially now when there is ample money to be made in environmental engineering etc.
Think of how much money it would be worth for someone to design say a building material that was made entirely of recycled products.....oh wait...someone did but old money paid him to shut up.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 3:09 pm
31 May 2007
What are we going to do? Grant billions of dollars of subsidies to CL technology and then drive them all out of business with a carbon tax?
Yup: it is classic political economy. One thing that subsidies buy (besides votes) is protection against cost-increasing regulations.
Political economists have shown in various academic studies that a feedback loop can develop in respect of the environment and subsidies. If an industry cannot operate without subsidies, then the government itself will be reluctant to impose tighter environmental regulations on it, because that will raise the industry's costs, or reduce its revenues, and then it will demand even more subsidies.
Some studies have even suggested that polluting industries -- especially if they are viewed by politicians as vital -- will behave strategically, letting themselves lag behind in environmental performance if they think the government will come to their rescue. The conduct of the U.S. automobile manufacturing industry (calling for all manner of government assistance to help them move to cleaner vehicles, having for two decades -- very consciously and very deliberately -- pursued a policy based on squeezing maximum profits from selling SUVs and other "small trucks") looks increasingly consistent with such a behavioural pattern.
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SustainableGreen Posted 4:15 pm
31 May 2007
It really is not money in absolute terms, although it is huge, but it is the security of that money over the long term. It is greed compounded. That is why the "entrenched" phrase is the key. IN other words, it is the corporate oligarchy, which has been around with growing power in the U.S., since the 1880s when the corporate-packed Supreme Court determined that corporations were people, hence the term "corporate person".
The subsidies will remain until there is real reform in 3 laws in the U.S. Campaign Finance, Lobbying, and Elections all need to be drastically changed to return power to the people. Otherwise, we will have lost all pretense of a representative democracy.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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