Carping about Iraq aside, it's still good to see the good guys in charge of the congress: "Senate Democrats are seeking a major reversal of energy tax policies that would take billions of dollars in tax breaks and other benefits from the oil industry to underwrite renewable fuels." Indeed. Part of the madness of the current climate change debate is that there often seems to be little awareness of how much good we could do by simply ending our subsidies for fossil fuels and directing those subsidies to renewables at no net cost whatsoever. Moves of this nature won't be enough, but they do help, and it's a total no-brainer that we should do them.
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Good Democrats
18 Jun 2007 09:34 am
Comments (15)
I could care less, if they won't end the war none of the rest of this matters to me. I won't say someone who loves is cat is a good person when he beats his wife. I won't call Democrat's good leaders when they attack one of the most hates groups in America while ignoring the most important issue in America. Fuck them, and fuck their attempts at mitigating the damage they've done. If they want to do something important, I'm with them. If shit like this is the best they'll even make an attempt with, they can go to hell.
Until they call for carbon taxes/higher gas taxes, their expressions of concern over global warming will ring hollow.
yeah, centralized planning always works so well, Matt. If we just leave things alone, then as oil prices rise, there will be actual market incentives to do the same thing - without the government making the mistake of trying to pick winners and losers.
Or perhaps you would rather see the likes of Ted Stevens and Ted Kennedy (with their vast wells of knowledge in this area) making calls?
James Robertson -
What are you trying to say? They're moving SUBSIDIES from the oil industry to other places. SUBSIDIES. If you're trying to say they should just eliminate them altogether then fine, but a realist knows that won't happen ever (because corporations don't actually like it when market forces hit them and they like the subsidies), but the "central planning" argument sounds like a strawman in this context.
If Dems were serious about making America more energy independent they would:
1) Stop blocking the extraction of American oil.
2) Facilitate investment in new nuclear reactors here by limiting liabilities in return for the adoption of state-of-the art safety practices. If only American Dems were smart as the French on this issue...
3) Stop subsidizing dead-end technologies like corn-based ethanol.
Yes, I'd like to see no subsidies, period. Not for oil companies, not for renewables. Normal market forces will handle this problem better than any planner, regardless of the planner's ideology.
LOL @ the Fred and James doing the robot.
"Must put in context of right wing talking points. Sound policy argument does not compute."
Central Planning is not a sound policy decision. It's never worked before, and it's not going to work now.
Keep going, you almost have that strawman licked.
Thunderclips:
If you have any objection, comments, or refutations of the three points I mentioned above, fire away, and I'll be happy to engage on the topics with you. If you prefer to stay in meta/snark mode, I'm not as interested in engaging in repartee with you.
Okay Fred, I will respond to your actual points:
1) Energy independence is a distraction- a red herring. The goal is moving away from energy sources that put carbon in the atmosphere. So oil extraction in the US is not a solution.
2) Limiting liability is a god damn subsidy. Its truly amazing how easily conservobots talk about the free market in one breath and then advocate subsidies for their favored industries in the next.
3) I agree that corn-based ethanol is probably a bad idea. But until that's a centerpiece of the proposed bill, its not really relevant.
And central planning does work quite nicely in the right circumstances. The ban on CFC's being such an obvious example such that anyone overlooking this must be seriously uninformed or suspected of being dishonest.
My preferred policies would be carbon taxes. But the same people crying about shifting subsidies to directions we actually want to see the industry heading would cry even harder about taxes.
"Yes, I'd like to see no subsidies, period. Not for oil companies, not for renewables. Normal market forces will handle this problem better than any planner, regardless of the planner's ideology."-Posted by James Robertson
What market mechanism will cause people to stop burning cheap fossil fuels and instead use carbon neutral sources of energy? Even if oil becomes expensive (it isn't now, despite what people think), coal will remain cheap. The only solution to the tragedy of the commons is for a central power to inflict a cost upon those who consume the commons. In this case, a central power must inflict costs on those who put CO2 in the atmosphere. The cost can take many forms - taxes, penalties, criminal prosecution, purchase of allowances, or the forgoing of subsidies.
1) What hilarious is that no one in the news media --or here -- talks about the REAL subsidy Big Oil is getting. The roughly $38 per GALLON of Middle East gasoline we spend on keeping control of that region. Not counting the cost in blood --6000+ lives and counting. Or those crippled for life.
2) Why is it that no one seems able to do simple arithmetic? Or as the economists call it --quantitative analysis?
1 barrel of oil yields 19.6 gallons of gasoline.
(Ref: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/gasoline_faqs.asp )
In 2006, we imported 806 Million barrels from the Middle East
(Ref: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mttimuspg1m.htm )
3) Our defense budget is approaching $900 BILLION/YEAR if you include all the "war on terror" supplementals (DOD and non-DOD),
DOD's Base spending,etc. If you include DOE's Nuclear programs,
Veteran's Benefits ($78 Bil/year and heading higher) plus INTEREST on all the debt run up with deficit spending to support bloated military
budgets, you're talking more about $1.2 TRILLION/YEAR! That's CONSUMPTION --not INVESTMENT. By my estimate, at least $600 BILLION PER Year of that is tied to keeping military control of the MIDDLE EAST
--including the "war on terror" flowing out of that policy.
4) Hence, we are spending roughly $600 BILLION / (19.6 x 806 Mil) = roughly $38 !!! for every gallon of Middle Eastern gasoline we import. You can quibble with the details -- but
you are still in the ballpark of over $30 /Gallon. Again, that's
ongoing CONSUMPTION that will get WORST as oil declines.
5) Note that the Republicans sabotage their much-Vaunted "free market" by hiding the huge costs of ME gasoline in the income tax (and by stealing
$4 TRILLION from the Trust Funds for Social Security/Medicare) while
keeping the "market price signal" at the pump of only $3/gallon.
In order to sabotage any attempts by investors to develop alternatives
to Big Oil
7) But the biggest resource we are wasting is TIME.
The real disaster -- massive declines in human population -- will hit in about 20 years when oil starts running out at an exponential rate. That's because the malign policy of Bush/Cheney --the subsidy for Big Oil -- will ensure
that our scientists will have neither the money, the time, or the incentive to develop alternative technology until it is much too late.
mpowell:
"Energy independence is a distraction- a red herring."
You sound like Chevron. Seriously -- check out their ads every week in The Economist. Chevron's point is that no country is completely energy independent. Perhaps, but some (e.g., Brazil) are more independent than others (e.g., us).
"The goal is moving away from energy sources that put carbon in the atmosphere."
The goal? If that's your goal, how do you plan to convince the Chinese and Indians to stop putting carbon in the atmosphere?
"Limiting liability is a god damn subsidy."
That's a fallacy of definition. Moving on to the substance though, you say the goal should be sources of energy that don't add carbon to the atmosphere. Nuclear energy doesn't put carbon in the atmosphere, and it's currently the only such energy source that can be scaled to supply the lion's share of our electricity needs. If you are against nuclear power, you really can't serious about reducing the use of carbon-based sources of energy -- unless you are advocating a reduction of energy usage from current sources to almost pre-modern levels. You need to address the legal and regulatory issues that have prevented us from building any new nuclear plants here in decades if you want to expand nuclear power.
"I agree that corn-based ethanol is probably a bad idea. But until that's a centerpiece of the proposed bill, its not really relevant."
It's relevant, and not just to energy policy. The misguided corn subsidies are raising the prices of corn (obviously) and meat and dairy products harvested from corn-fed livestock.
"And central planning does work quite nicely in the right circumstances. The ban on CFC's being such an obvious example such that anyone overlooking this must be seriously uninformed or suspected of being dishonest."
I think you're being lose with definitions here again: I don't think banning something is an example of central planning. Central planning usually refers to the government telling industry how much of what products to produce. What you seem to be getting at though is a valid (though different) point: outright bans -- on CFCs, in your example, or the old ban on leaded gasoline -- have proven effective means of environmental protection.
Comments closed July 02, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Yeah. It's a "total no-brainer" that the subsidies should go from places like Exxon to places like Archers Daniels Midland. Totally, man!
Posted by Joe Strummer | June 18, 2007 9:52 AM