Perhaps, but that’s not close to what’s happening here. No one’s shown it’s economically irrational (in the short to very medium-long term) for energy companies to spend most of their incremental cap ex dollars on petroleum (while still hedging their bets as many/all have with substantial R&D in other energy sources including the ones beloved of the ecoleft). They’re acutely aware that it costs them more and more to find many of the new barrels, but they see those barrels in the short-term as a big part of the least-worst energy solution.
After WWII, Japans infrastructure was in ruins. It had no industrial resources of note and no experience in auto and electronics manufacturing. The government saw those as priorities for the future of their nation and so subsidized those industries heavily for a strategic purpose. Every year Japanese companies would lose a fortune because they had to buy American pig iron, ship it to Japan, manufacture the car and ship it back to the states at a price that could compete with Detroit. Ditto with electronics.
Over the years money was lost but experience and infrastructure was gained, until the nation itself could rest on the industries it had nurtured.
I’m sure in 1950 there were Japanese conservatives scoffing at the idea that japan would be a world power in auto manufacturing.
While we are developing alternative forms of energy, why not try what Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu has been talking about for years, white/light colored roofs on buildings in warm climates? (For starters) No investment needed, no research to finance, no subsidies to pay, it’s already a proven fact, white/light colored roofs on buildings save big bucks as it relates to this. The whole subject isn’t part of a political agenda; it has great environmental effects, its science not politics. Annually it’s supposed to equal the equivalent of removing millions of cars from the road, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, etc. Now if I can only get my home owners association to get on board. Everyone gather in a calming circle and sing chants to calm your blood pressure so we remember it’s important that we all work on ways to develop , at a reasonable cost and impact, alternative energy… deep breaths…
This is very much true. But – and by no means am I defending the Der Trihs, with whom I disagree as vehemently as you do – this common objection rather misses the point. No one (or almost no one) believes that we will literally run out of oil, wringing every last drop from the earth. “Running out” is shorthand for cost rising to a point beyond which we see dire economic and social consequences. “No, we won’t LITERALLY run out of oil!” is not a productive objection; it’s a rhetorical counterpart to the paradox of Zeno (before we run out of oil we must deplete half, and before that a quarter, and before that an eighth, &c …).
But that only works by ignoring that we need to reduce the use of fuels that release CO2 into the atmosphere.
In essence, sure they (the fossil fuel companies) will do well now, but it will be hard to ignore that they are liable for the most likely future conditions that will come as a result of their myopia.
As for the subject at hand, I would have to say the opposition conservatives have against renewable energy is based most of the times in misrepresentations, and worse, they have the power to enact laws that ignore any science.
http://www.usustatesman.com/mobile/column-cutting-through-the-political-talk-1.2478936
And some are against alternative energy because the quicker we use up all the petroleum, the quicker we can get back to killing whales.
Wake up, people, they’re planning something. And those damned dolphins are in on it.
Then they shouldn’t say “run out of oil” to oversimplify their case to scare people into buying their agenda. I have talked to many, many people who read the Peak Oil thesis as meaning one day we would wake up and the gas pump would literally tick over empty.
If it’s more nuanced than that, then there is room for a cost-benefit debate, then it becomes clear that some catastrophe isn’t going to blindside us over night, then we have to factor in the possibility that clever clever scientists and drillers might find other/more efficient ways to tap the vast vast amounts of hydrocarbon in different forms that still exist and are within a reasonable time frame (centuries) not going to disappear.
But that’s harder to squeeze on to a bumper sticker, and doesn’t satisfy the need of some to preach Apocalypse either as a short cut to difficult policy arguments or for some personal agenda. The reality is that what role oil will play in a modern economy that 99.9% of us are not willing to see return to the buggy whip era (or bombed out post-war Japan), and for how long, is a complicated question as to which there’s going to be, among reasonable people, a struggle to define “situational morality” to stick with the religious idiom. “Why don’t those evil conservatives just let us switch over to wind and solar right now?!?!?” is the equivalent of literalist flat earth fundamentalism and should receive about as warm a greeting here as that would.
And that would be a good retort if it wasn’t for the ugly fact that most of the current conservative leadership is rejecting them for misleading reasons.
I myself looked strongly into getting solar panels for my house (my roof has very good sourthern exposure). And it quickly became apparent that the only way the economics worked was based on the government subsidies, and I was not confident that these would continue indefinitely (& also couldn’t get clarity on the long term costs associated with maintaining/replacing the panels and/or roofing) so I took a pass, at least for now.
I’ve not looked into this on a public policy basis, but based on my own micro experience, I tend to be a bit skeptical, pending future technological advances.
[As it happens, I also went out and invested a lot of money in non-renewable energy MLPs, but I don’t think that’s a factor, and don’t think my opinion about anything energy-related has changed in the six months since I made the investments.]
In short:
-Electric rates have direct impact on local economies.
-Renewable energy is expensive on a MW and MWH basis when you start rolling it out in scale. (Tax subsidies can move money around, but then you’re just making everyone pay more in the form of higher tax burdens at some point).
-Expensive means higher costs to current customers.
-Thus, enacting a Federal Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard creates additional costs on exisiting customers and businesses.
-Companies don’t like higher electric costs at their stores and factories, so they lobby to their congressmen and petition at intervening hearing at PUCs against renewables. They say higher costs will force them to relocate factories out of state, costing jobs.
-Low income and working class folks complain that higher electric rates means lower take-home pay, but wealthy people don’t give a damn about their electric bill. So it’s seen as a regressive tax in the middle of a recession to make greenies feel good.
There may have been ways to offset the electric cost increases with cap and trade and allocations, but that got killed off last year.
Thus, Republicans don’t like renewables and it is perfectly consistent with their pro-business core and happens to work well with lower and middle income america as well. Honestly, that’s about as simple as it gets.
I’m conservative. And I not only am in favor of renewable energy, I actually work directly in the field in my professional career and have been responsible for engineering renewable energy systems.
Furthermore, there is a growing branch of conservatives who view renewable energy as a national security issue, and who are very much in favor of ending petroleum use, coal use, etc. and stopping all energy trading with other countries, going full-on nuclear and renewables. I’m sort of in that camp, except I see conservation as being a very major leg of a three-legged stool (conservation, renewables, and nuclear). I know, these are crazy conservative ideas, but doggone it, I’ll defend them nonetheless.
As for why Congress is stupid about energy, I don’t know - why not stop electing lawyers and start electing engineers? And IIRC the last President who was smart enough to have any engineering background was Carter.
I think the cost/benefit analysis is the crux of the issue. ISTM that, currently, most of the political Right in the US refuses to concede there is any cost to burning mineral hydrocarbons. Either physics is wrong, or increasing carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere increase average surface temperatures and precipitate climate change. Climate change has real potential costs (perhaps even benefits in some locations) associated with it. What are the long-term costs of ocean acidification? Species habitat loss/extinction?
I’m a liberal who is uncomfortable with the government funding much besides basic research and development (which I think it should fund generously). Let the market decide what technologies that come out of government or industrial labs work. But I think the government should help price in the costs of public goods (the atmosphere, the oceans) that are damaged by non-renewable energy. The government wouldn’t need to subsidize renewables if the price of burning fossil hydrocarbons was appropriate. Hydrocarbon taxes should be phased in soon. Even David Frum (no flaming liberal) thinks they’re a good idea.
Also, where the hell are conservatives when it comes to conservation? As mentioned above, there are relatively cheap ways to effectively generate energy by not using energy in the first place (without sitting in the dark wearing sweaters). There’s enough hostility on the Right that the House wants to lift restrictions on inefficient lighting that go into effect in a couple of years. I’m fine with that, if they institute the aforementioned hydrocarbon taxes. The market will then quickly develop cleaner technology, I feel sure.
Side benefit: hydrocarbon taxes would help the economy by improving the fiscal situation on the revenue side of the balance sheet.
Quoth Sateryn76:
You seem to be under the impression that hydrogen fuel is an energy-production technology, and therefore in competition with solar/wind/biofuels. It’s not. It’s an energy storage technology. You still need some source of energy (which may well be solar or wind) to produce the hydrogen.
Quoth Una:
Nitpick: The fact that subsequent presidents didn’t have engineering backgrounds does not necessarily imply that they weren’t smart enough. And really, just one engineering background out of 43 presidents is probably already overrepresenting the profession (though not nearly as much as lawyers are overrepresented, of course). Realistically, it doesn’t matter so much that the President emself have technical expertise, as that e chooses advisors who do, and listens to them.
Could also hurt aspects of the economy by making it hard for working/middle class people to commute, heat their house, etc. Not ruling it out out of hand (the reality is that many of us here would be more able to pay for $8 gas, grumbling all the way, with comparatively less impact on our ability to make ends meet, than would Joe Sixpack).
Just making the point again (and I get from the rest of your post that you generally do get this, so no snark intended) that pushing down on one gopher has the tendency to make at least one other gopher pop up on another part of the board.
Not arguing that there won’t be pain. I’m OK with the boiling frog method of applying carbon taxes: dial them up slowly over several years, and use some of the proceeds to subsidize energy for the poor. I don’t believe economics is a zero-sum game. Making us more energy-efficient (and not pissing in our own pool with burning everything in sight, as it were) is like improving productivity in manufacturing: ultimately, it should improve standards of living for everyone.
And we affluent energy hogs (I am one), need to pay more of the externalities of our profligacy.
The idea that renewable could distort the middle class and poor out of their heating and transportation is short sighted beyond imagination and very telling of the priorities or lack of foresight of those campaigning against them.
For example what do these folks think the poor and middle class will do when fossil fuels get expensive from scarcity?
Also how do they think the poor and middle class will be affected by human induced climate change?
Any answers I’ve seen to either question aren’t nearly as good as just taking our medicine now.
Conservatives are against renewable energy because they get their largest donations from the makers of non-renewable energy.
read=bribes. we all know gov’t officials are taking money from corporations.
They don’t actually.
http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topcontribs.php
Of the top 100 donors to either party, you could maybe say 2-3 of them are linked to the energy/resource sector.
Short version of thread: a few people exaplin exactly why, and exactly reasonably, what is offensive and ignorant about the OP, and what we might like to see instead. We then follow up with numerous left-wingers denouncing us while offering no sensiuble alternatives except to hammer away without actually correcting the flaw in their thinking. :smack: