In the spirit of the general question, Sam, I would say that I think there is some sort of compromise position we could reach and that your latest outline of it comes fairly close. Of course, I think it is inevitable that each of us on either side will keep pushing form things more to our liking, but as a sort of “compromise bill” we could pass, I think we could probably do better than Congress [both House and Senate] has…which admittedly isn’t saying much!
Also, I am sort of assuming here that you are leaving political considerations out of the equation. For example, even if I could be convinced to go with a gas tax in place of CAFE standards as a compromise position, I might still want to continue supporting CAFE standards as a position that is more likely to work in the political climate.
Anyway, now, on the more micromanaging side, I would like to comment on each of your proposals. First, two points to inform the discussion and where I am coming from on it:
(1) Last week, I attended a 2-day conference held by the NY Section of the American Physical Society on “Energy and Environment”. Many of the speakers were from different energy industries, some were academics.
(2) Current electricity generation in the U.S. can be broken down as follows:
coal 52%
natural gas 16%
oil 3% [having fallen from 17% in 1973]
nuclear 20%
hydroelectric 8%
other renewables 2%
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[li]No drilling in ANWR unless some emergency threshold kicks in, so that it can be used when the day comes that we really need it, but not before then.[/li][/quote]
I would say simply “ANWR remains with its current protected status”. This leaves to the future the possibility of revisiting the issue. I am against putting in any threshhold now and, needless to say, I think we should never need it.
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[li]Fix the regulatory regime that has halted development of nuclear power. Build enough nuclear plants (even if they need some startup subsidy) to replace the oil consumed by the few electrical plants that use Oil. Plus, enough nuclear plants to cover the added demand from converting 20% of our vehicles to electricity. I’m not going to work the numbers right now, but it’s an easy enough calculation to figure out.[/li][/quote]
I don’t know what you mean by the “regulatory regime that has halted development of nuclear power.” I think it is important to keep nuclear power strongly regulated for our safety. I certainly don’t think we’ve erred on the side of too much safety, although there always admittedly might be more efficient ways to regulate to the same level of safety.
At the above-mentioned conference, there were two speakers on nuclear power…both strongly pro-nuclear…one from Entergy (a nuclear power company) and the other Cornell. Neither made the claim that regulation was what was what was preventing more plants from being built. In fact, the only thing the guy from Entergy said was something like, “Nuclear energy is very tightly regulated by the government, as it should be.” Even if you read what the industry mouthpiece Nuclear Energy Institute has to say on regulation ( http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=4&catid=125 ), while encouraging regulations to evolve with time, it refrains from really criticizing them now, let alone making any claims of the sort that you seemed to imply.
Finally, as I noted above, the reason why nuclear power plants are continuing to be built in France is not that it is cheaper there but that the fossil fuel alternatives are considerably more expensive. So, while I will not necessarily oppose your idea of some (additional) effective subsidization of nuclear, I think it is important to make sure it is only at the expense of environmentally destructive alternatives like fossil fuels.
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[li]Approve Yucca Mountain and start moving waste into it. If we’re going to build more nuclear plants, we should get this done.[/li][/quote]
I’m not real up on the Yucca Mt. debate enough to be sure, but from what I know, I am inclined to agree with you in that there probably ain’t a really better alternative to dealing with the waste we have. However, the transport of the wastes there is something where we cannot afford to skimp on safety and security. (A dollar spent there will go a lot further for security than a dollar spent on NMD!)
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[li]An increase in petroleum taxes in yearly increments, such that the price of oil is projected to increase to more than today’s cost of major alternatives like wind and solar within 50 years.[/li][/quote]
This is a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison since, at least until we have fully electric or fuel cell cars, wind and solar really fill a different market than the mobile vehicles market filled by oil. You have to bring coal and natural gas into the equation. Also, I am not sure this is aggressive enough in the case of wind, which is apparently already becoming competitive (with the small subsidy that it currently has) in many markets. Solar, admittedly, is still only competitive in very niche markets. I also think that the amount of taxation should be informed partly on the basis of target results like you do here and partly on the basis of some rough assessment of externalities.
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[li]Forget the CAFE standards increase. Not only is it very anti-consumer, but it causes distortions in the marketplace and puts an excess burden on auto manufacturers. [/li][/quote]
Well, my head is still spinning from reading the comparison of various alternative versions of CAFE standards and other alternatives, like gas taxes, in the NAS report. (See this chapter: http://books.nap.edu/books/0309076013/html/83.html ) The issues are complex and I am not quite willing to concede the point that a few tax is necessarily better (although I would probably accept one as a compromise). There are various ways in which CAFE standards may better correct some distortions that already exist in the marketplace (like people not calculating the cost to own a car with lower fuel economy, or worse yet, manufacturers not even offering consumers options that would save them money because the manufacturers don’t think they would sell as well). By the way, for consumers like me personally, the CAFE standards would improve our lot by giving us a lot more vehicle choice than we have now.
Sounds good. I seem to recall that the economics is that each penny of tax raises close to $1 billion in revenue (maybe $800 million is a better estimate), so I think there is room here to also give back some of the money in the form of a tax break to low-income people, who would bear the brunt of a fuel tax.
