JakobFabian01’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Good guys and bad guys

  You can't point the finger of blame in only one direction on this one.  Champs and chumps alike can be found in both the public and the private sector.  The CLEVELAND SCENE article cited by Sean Casten praised a pioneering private company for inventing the new co-generation technology:

  "Akron-based ReXorce Thermionics, Inc. just received a $4.3 million grant from Ohio's Third Frontier Project, which funds innovative high-tech research to advance its work on waste-heat recovery."

  But the local bureaucrats have to change the rules of energy distribution in order to implement this new technology.  And there are, as always, barriers in the practice of other, BIGGER private corporations.  As the SCENE reporter wrote:

  "Privately owned utilities [...] usually discourage companies, large and small, from installing on-site waste-heat-recovery-based power generation by charging prohibitively high rates for backup power should the local supply break down. Such stand-alone power supplies threaten utilities' bottom lines. After all, profits are derived from costs passed on to users."

  I do admire the Great Lakes Brewery.  This company has always had a strong environmental consciousness, which even shows in the name given to one of its great beers: "Burning River Pale Ale."  This name commemorates the infamous 1969 fire on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, which served as an alarm bell for environmentalists.  These are the best of the good guys!On Cleveland brewery attempts energy recyling yet is foiled by regulation posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Cashing in on a Crisis

  That's all the Gingrich plan is.  Its beneficiaries will be limited to investors in oil company stocks, who will see their capital gains rise a little.  The rest of us won't see any change in gasoline prices for years, if ever.

  I'm not even saying that all offshore drilling is always wrong.  But this notion that we need to "do it now" without due consideration of the very real risks that offshore drilling poses to the other real benefits that our coastal waters provide us - fish, for example - really sounds like a baaaaad deal.

  I think Gingrich wants us to accept his deal with as little forethought as possible.  This explains his great hurry.

  Even if his petition fails to have much influence in Congress - and let's hope it doesn't - it should still provide the Republican Party with a handy list of useful, gung-ho dupes to target with future propaganda and campaign literature.On Gingrich's 'grassroots' drilling campaign is funded by Big Oil, report says posted 1 year, 3 months ago 8 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  And I don't love Pickens.

  By the way, everybody should know that T. Boone Pickens is also a main sponsor of the "Swift Boat" ads against John Kerry in 2004, which were a slimy smear of baseless insinuations against a man who served honorably in the Vietnam War.  In my humble opinion, Pickens is a despicable man, whose obscene wealth brings him much more attention than he deserves.  For my part, whether as an environmentalist or as a human being, I do not care to associate with him.On Texas oilman unveils Pickens Plan to avert U.S. energy crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Pickens loves nukes, too.

  Here's a quote from the website that "GreyFlcn" has helpfully provided (http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/05 etc.):

  'The main problem, Pickens said, is that 85 million barrels a day is as much oil as the world industry can produce. That's it. More simply isn't possible. The trouble is, in the next quarter, demand will be around 86.5m barrels each day. The only solution that Boone sees is to make all the alternatives - he singled out wind and solar - much (much) bigger players in America's energy portfolio. For example, even with all of the problems with corn ethanol, he'd rather use it than foreign oil.

  When it comes to natural gas vehicles, Pickens said, the U.S. seriously lags behind the rest of the world. There are 7m natural gas vehicles in the world, but only 150,000 in the U.S. It hurt him to say so, but he wishes the U.S. had followed France into the nuclear frontier. Also, Littlefair and Pickens agree that natural gas is a bridge to hydrogen.

  As for politics, Boone is not pleased with the energy policies of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He's a McCain supporter, but on the summer gas tax holiday issue, he said that, "I don't know what he has in mind there."'

  Apparently, Pickens is a pragmatist, which is a good thing, since adhering to his principles - consume more of everything, but consume everything harmful first, until the government stops you - would be suicidal, one way or another.On Texas oilman unveils Pickens Plan to avert U.S. energy crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Investing in solutions

  Another thing that may help to determine whether we choose CO2 taxes or capping-and-trading is how we encourage investing in technologies that make CO2 reductions possible.

  If all we do is cap-and-trade, then big CO2 producers have to pay small CO2 producers, and the result is that those who need to invest in more efficiency have to pay those who are already efficient.  I like meritocracy, but doesn't this kind of trade make improving efficiency more difficult for those who most need to do it (since they get punished financially) and less attractive for those who are already efficient (since they get rewarded just for doing what they're already doing)?

  Of course, every proposal includes tax breaks for technological improvements.  But it seems to me that a CO2 tax could immediately produce revenue to fund these improvements.  This might speed things up.

  Everybody talks about the US-American aversion to taxes as if this thing is the one unchangeable fact about the universe.  I agree that the anti-tax movement has done an amazing job befuddling US-Americans with their simple vision of big corporations as golden geese, from which all wealth comes (not from labor, apparently) and of government as a terrible black hole into which our money disappears, never to be seen again.

  Actually, I know the secret of what government really does with our hard-earned money.  It SPENDS it.  That's right, and through our votes, we can influence the way the government spends our money - much more than we can influence the way corporations spend the money that we pay them.

  So I say, if our calculations should show that CO2 taxes would be either more efficient or fairer (or both) than CO2 capping-and-trading (and I confess I haven't yet done all the math here), then we should SAY SO and not be concerned with "taxophobia."  This and other similarly irrational fears would seem less inevitable if we more often had the courage to criticize them rather than pander to them.On Day five of the UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses