Just got to 218+, per C-SPAN:
H.R. 2454 YEA NAY NV
DEMOCRATIC 211 44 1
REPUBLICAN 8 168 2
INDEPENDENT
TOTALS 219 212 3Not a lot of room to spare, though. It sort of limped across the finish line, with almost almost all of the votes in the last two minutes or so coming in on the nay side once it had clinched passage.We don't know who the individual nays and yeas are, but it looks like Pelosi and Waxman got 6 of 21 Republican fence-sitters and 25 of 52 Democratic ones. There may also have been a couple of liberal votes against the bill, although some liberals who were contemplating voting against the bill, like Lloyd Doggett of Texas, wound up not doing so.
UPDATED: Here's the roll call. There were at least three liberal no's -- Stark, DeFazio, and Kucinich.
So, how does this bill pass the 60-vote Senate with such a narrow margin in the House? Well, maybe -- probably? -- it won't. But the Senate will be voting on a somewhat different bill, at a somewhat different time in the legislative calendar, and its members have somewhat different prerogatives. Fewer of them are under re-election pressure. And Obama -- wisely, I think -- has conserved a lot of his political muscle for the Senate fight. Then again, who knows how much political muscle he'll have left depending on how health care and the economy go.
Three current Republican Senators -- Snowe, Collins and Mel Martinez -- voted for cloture on the Liberman-Warner climate bill last year (so did four Republican senators who have since left the Senate). Six other surviving Republicans -- Graham, Gregg, McCain, Murkowski, Cornyn, DeMint -- did not vote on cloture. Cornyn and DeMint are staunch conservatives who were probably out of the office that day, but the other four are maybe gettable.
On the other hand, several Democrats voted against cloture, and several others declined to vote. Someone like Mary Landireu of Louisana is not very likely to vote for this bill, certainly, and there will have to be some sausage-rolling to get farm and coal state Democrats like Kent Conrad and Robert Byrd on board.
The point is this: I don't think there are 41 solid 'no's in the Senate -- not yet. There might be 37 or 38 or 39, but not 41. And as long as that's the case, there's some daylight for the White House. But it won't be easy, and if environmental advocates didn't like the version that came out of the House, they aren't liable to be any more pleased with whatever has an opportunity to make it though the Senate.
103 comments
DOA in the Senate. Why bother except as a show? How much did those votes cost the taxpayers just to push it up this hill?
Does anyone know of any websites that give a roll call (how each congressman/senator voted) on every bill. I would like to know the 8 republicans that voted for this as well as the 44 dems against.
Also FIRST!!!
Roll call vote can be found here:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll477.xml
Starch conservatives are the ones who only allow traditional sauces on their pasta, right?
(Aw, you changed it.)
Why did Dennis Kucinich vote against this bill?
As you noted yesterday, there weren't 41 solid "no's" in the Senate in March- there were 67.
Of course, if it passes, and it becomes criminal to offend Gaia by turning on the air conditioner when it's 100 degrees in Louisiana, then you're going to see uprisings that, like the situation in Iran, defy your brand of statistical analysis.
Anyone know where I can get a good solid Minnesota Senator Yea vote on progressive issues?
e3323:
Knowing Kucinich, he probably thought it wasn't progressive enough. I'm not sure how someone with his principles is able to keep getting elected, but I admire him.
I'm guessing Stark, DeFazio, and Kucinich probably voted against the bill for two reasons:
First, it was kind of rushed through the House without really being debated or reviewed thoroughly, and DeFazio and Kucinich at least are two of the most pro-transparency folks in Congress.
Second, they probably have concerns that it won't be effective enough at reducing emissions, and they want it to be more progressive.
God bless them.
This going nowhere. Health care? Also in trouble. Financial regulation? Dead. Gitmo? Open for the foreseeable future. FISA? Alive and well. DOMA? Vigorously defended by Obama's justice department.
This is the sort of disappointment you get when: 1. you confuse a Democratic landslide with a "liberal" landslide; and 2. you assume your man is more moral than other mortal pols and will sacrifice his self interest for the cause.
What a waste of time and effort. Why not put some of that "determination" into stopping the banks from raping us on a daily basis?
Jesus, I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have voted for McCain.
Of course, if it passes, and it becomes criminal to offend Gaia by turning on the air conditioner when it's 100 degrees in Louisiana,
Excellence demonstration of exactly the type of wacked out caricatures that this sort of legislation has to fight against to get passed. :( Not that that can all be laid at the feet of ignorance, willful and otherwise. Batshit crazy douche bags like Greenpeace certainly have helped.
"First, it was kind of rushed through the House without really being debated or reviewed thoroughly..."
Wrong. By definition this bill was impossible to "review thoroughly", as it has not even been completely written yet.
Instead, it has "placeholder" spots where even more insanely stupid, economy killing verbiage can be placed.
This is just super- first we had (anti)stimulus, which allowed for a generous 10 hours to review a 1500 page (roughly) piece of legislation, now we have crap and strangle which will destroy our economy being passed without even being fully written.
Yeah, nice deliberative body. Deliberately asinine, actually.
In order to save the economy, Congress decided it was necessary to burn it to the ground. Thanks, pinheads- oh, and China and India say thanks too.
@BrianJenkins: There were 67 nos for reconciliation. I could be wildly optimistic lot of the Dems that voted for that can be bought with changes to the bill.
Sherrod Brown, for example, just introduced a major green jobs bill that many people expect will make it into whatever package the Senate takes up. That will probably help sway rust belt Dems like Evan Bayh just a little bit.
Also, I suspect that the landscape of the debate will be very different. There has not been a sustained effort from the arms of the government that have the ability to shape the public conversation about the horrors of climate change. Plus, it's gonna get a lot hotter, and gas prices are going to get higher, which will give the conservative Dems cover to vote for the domestic drilling provisions of Bingaman's energy bill, which will get bundled into Waxman-Markey. Honestly, I think the oil and gas parts of this bill are going to really sell it in the Senate and are probably going to peel off more votes in the House.
My only concern is that they are going to neuter the cap even more than they have. I think it speaks volumes that the netroots have barely noticed that this bill passed today. We need to get ready to lobby folks in the Senate hard, because the Nazis like all of the PeteKents in their underwear are going to flood the zone.
Also, despite the fact that the Dems gave a lot of freshmen permission to not vote for the bill, they can call on those members if they need them, I've heard from good sources. In other words, I think Waxman-Markey could have passed with 235 if the Senate had passed it first, which is a much more respectable margin.
So in other words, I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic, despite today's somewhat disappointing and unconvincing vote.
This exactly the kind of overreaching that I was afraid of last year when Obama won. If this makes it through the Senate, I predict a GOP Congress after 2010. I know I will vote that way and I am a die-hard Democrat
"This exactly the kind of overreaching that I was afraid of last year when Obama won. If this makes it through the Senate, I predict a GOP Congress after 2010. I know I will vote that way and I am a die-hard Democrat"
No you're not. I'd love to see a "die-hard Democrat" who thinks a massively watered-down version of cap-and-trade (which he and many other Democrats campaigned on, of course) is "overreaching". Would that be the global warming denier die-hard liberal faction of the Democratic party? That's a big one, let me tell you.
Go away, troll.
Apocalypsefrogs...
now we have [a bill] being passed without even being fully written.
You do realize that this isn't passed "for real", right? It is a preliminary vote that is sort of an artifact of having two separate legislature bodies having to come to a consensus, and the Senate rather than the House being the nature chokepoint at this time. It was really a vote on the basic idea, the vote on the details is still to come.
Jim, the Democratic Senators who voted against reconciliation didn't arrive on the turnip truck. They knew that the bill cannot pass without either reconciliation or Republican votes.
Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, and the other Democrats from Southern and Midwestern states know that this bill will cripple their economies. But their donors want them to GO GREEN! so they'd be happy to let Republicans take the blame for killing it.
Jim, in the last few weeks, ABC has aired the asinine Earth 2100 (aka The Day After The Day After Tomorrow) and the government has released a major report claiming that global warming is, as always, "worse than we imagined." They're already going flatout to pass this bill into law. They can't amp it up any more without most people concluding that they're just trying to scare people, the way they claim Bush did about the Iraq War.
Dwight, at least you recognize that this is the message of the bill's supporters. There's been absolutely no consideration of how to keep A/Cs running in Houston in the summer, or heaters running in Chicago in the winter, without fossil-fuel-based electricity. No consideration of how to grow food and transport it, keep up communications, or do the million energy-based tasks we take for granted but that require producing CO2 to happen.
"Of course, if it passes, and it becomes criminal to offend Gaia by turning on the air conditioner when it's 100 degrees in Louisiana"
"There's been absolutely no consideration of how to keep A/Cs running in Houston in the summer, or heaters running in Chicago in the winter, without fossil-fuel-based electricity. No consideration of how to grow food and transport it, keep up communications, or do the million energy-based tasks we take for granted but that require producing CO2 to happen"
This is called the "straw man" fallacy. It is not an argument. No one is suggesting criminalizing air conditioning or eliminating CO2 emissions.
This exactly the kind of overreaching that I was afraid of last year when Obama won. If this makes it through the Senate, I predict a GOP Congress after 2010. I know I will vote that way and I am a die-hard Democrat
Glenn Beck, get off Nate Silver's website.
Dwight, at least you recognize that this is the message of the bill's supporters.
I do but you certainly don't show any signs of it. Suggesting at any point anyone remotely connected to this suggested in any way making turning on AC illegal is incredibly...incredible, and asininely unproductive to boot.
Now could the bill use a generous heap of helping, for example, people in Houston (where I'm moving in about a month, BTW) make better use of the power spent on A/C and heating via weatherproofing methods? Why yes, yes it could. Could it use some tweaking to make sure this doesn't slam certain areas all at once without providing time to adapt to changes in the economics of power use vs alternatives? Could it use some regional factoring in to acknowledge the realities of certain climates? Sure. On the later I'm pretty sure Obama even expressly mentioned that some time ago. Whether the details are there yet or not? *shrug*
But that isn't what your post was about, was it? Your post was about a bullshit strawman.
here's been absolutely no consideration of how to keep A/Cs running in Houston in the summer, or heaters running in Chicago in the winter, without fossil-fuel-based electricity. No consideration of how to grow food and transport it, keep up communications, or do the million energy-based tasks we take for granted but that require producing CO2 to happen.
Just because you haven't heard about this doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It would help a lot if you weren't spouting crap with your fingers plugged into your ears.
"Dwight, at least you recognize that this is the message of the bill's supporters. There's been absolutely no consideration of how to keep A/Cs running in Houston in the summer, or heaters running in Chicago in the winter, without fossil-fuel-based electricity. No consideration of how to grow food and transport it, keep up communications, or do the million energy-based tasks we take for granted but that require producing CO2 to happen."
That's a serious mischaracterization of the capability of renewable energy and of utilities to engage in demand response.
Did you know that solar power can be used to offset expensive natural gas generation? Concentrated solar power is very close to being cost-competitive in very sunny areas, and solar photovoltaic won't be far behind.
You also appear to be unaware of the fact that utilities are investing RIGHT NOW in grid that will allow large commercial and industrial users (and ultimately residential users) save money and energy during hot times when you have to run your A/C. It actually saves the utility money and lets customers save energy while keeping their AC on full blast.
I think you really need to see this from the utility as well as the consumers point of view. You seem to have many misconceptions about how electric power actually works in the real world, which can be remedied with a light read of this:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/electricity_basics.html
ApocalypseFrogs said...
it has "placeholder" spots where even more insanely stupid, economy killing verbiage can be placed.
You admit it has 'placeholder' spots, meaning that you also admit that the Senate will see, read, and debate (and probably leave in place at least some of the bill as passed by the House). And you don't think that's 'fair'?
What if the House passed a bill, the Senate amended the bill by:
1. Changing the title; and
2. Stripping every word and substituting an entirely different version.
Don't think that's fair?
Ronnie Ray-Gun's first tax cuts were passed in that manner.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Jim, solar power advocates have been saying it's "close to competitive" longer than I've been alive (I'm 33), but it's never gotten there and it's still not there. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House, after all. So why do we think the breakthrough is coming now when it's been prophesied and has failed so many times before?
As for efficiency, why do we need to raise taxes and blather about CO2 for that? Businesses should always be striving to save the extra buck, and utilities are in the business of providing power to meet the public's needs. There's no need to raise taxes on everyone and everything to do this.
Lastly, once you start threatening the lives of "Deniers" and comparing coal trains to the trains headed to Auschwitz (as have been done by Romm and Hansen in the last few weeks), rationing electricity looks downright restrained. It is the next logical step beyond Waxman-Markey, and it will come if W-M is passed and Gaia is deemed not to be appeased.
I know you passionately believe in the Church of Gaia. I recognize that religious beliefs are always a touchy subject. But your sacraments are threatening to become a major problem for my budget and well-being, and to paraphrase Voltaire, your rights end at the tip of my nose.
As for efficiency, why do we need to raise taxes and blather about CO2 for that? Businesses should always be striving to save the extra buck, and utilities are in the business of providing power to meet the public's needs. There's no need to raise taxes on everyone and everything to do this.
The reason is that the full costs have NOT been bore by those businesses and end customers. Both at the supply end (wars to keep oil flowing, research, etc.) and the side effects (enemies acquired, pollution, etc.)
Brian Jenkins said...
. . . solar power advocates have been saying it's "close to competitive" longer than I've been alive (I'm 33),
Could it be that you believe it's not close to competitive, therefore you don't look for information that might dispel the lie in your head?
Try this link, for a report from July 2001 that describes the installation of solar power generation in Germany:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/07/45056
The southernmost part of Germany is located at about 47 degrees, 15 minutes N Latitude, about the same latitude North as northern Minnesota, central North Dakota, central Montana and central Washington state.
After reading the above referenced article on Wired.com, go to a search engine and enter an appropriate search term, and you might find that Germany now has the largest installed solar generation plants (both in size, and percentage of power that is generated) of any nation in the world. The majority of Germany sits north of all the US except for Alaska.
If the Germans can do it, why can't the people in the US do it? Maybe if many of them pulled their heads out of the nether regions of wingnuttery, and looked at the real world, the US might be able to emulate the work the Germans are doing.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Dwight said...
. . . utilities are in the business of providing power to meet the public's needs.
Incorrect.
Utilities are in the business of making money - how they do it is restricted by laws and regulations. If utilities could make money without generating power, they would.
Oh wait! That's already been tried, and new laws and regulations had to be put in place as a result.
Enron and its energy futures markets.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Correction:
I attributed to Dwight a comment that in actuality was made by GCC-denier and Big Business gluteous maximus-kissing Brian Jenkins.
My apologies, Dwight.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Rudy: the cost to have a vote in the House is practically nil. Congress has a budget that is, on the whole, rather meager, and if there hadn't been a vote today, everyone who works there would still have gotten paid and the buildings would have still needed cooling (it was HOT in the district today). The costs on having a vote are essentially ink and paper costs...not a big deal in the slightest.
Brian: you accuse others of using hyperbole in a post dripping with sarcasm and hyperbole. If you are referring to your regular energy costs as an individual, clear-eyed analysts at the CBO have estimated the costs as being fairly minor to the average person. You claim that they are a "major problem for my budget and well-being." While I can't know your situation, such a claim seems grandiose. If you are an oil worker, or your income somehow depends on energy, real harm may or may not be in your future...I don't know. But average people are projected to feel very little impact.
Moreover, in a situation of interdependence, Voltaire/Lockean unbridled individualism simply doesn't fly. Yes, increased costs infringe upon your ability to spend your money as you choose; of course, as a use-tax, you can opt to pay less of it by using less. I live near the coast, and if the projections are correct, everyone's energy use affects my state economy, likely my job, and many other aspects of my life (and those of hundreds of millions of others), albeit each individual's use has a fantastically tiny effect. You can argue against the bill because you don't think cap-and-trade will work, or because you think it will work but do not think the benefits outweigh the costs. But, to argue it from a standpoint of pure liberty is way too messy, particularly if you think that your rights to "life, liberty, and property", if you think about it, treat property and liberty as two distinct concepts, implying liberty in social/political affairs is possibly as important as liberty in economic affairs.
Finally, a google search of (Rahm Emanuel "coal trains") yielded no results of interest, and given the recent Holocaust Museum shooting, it seems dubious that Emanuel would have said such a thing recently.
While, perhaps, just flinging invective your way and calling you a troll would have been shorter, I hope that this response, which seems rational to my reading, will encourage you to turn down the volume. Given the nature of the internet, I highly doubt that, but it is what it is.
Here is my take on the Bill. On this issue, the gesture is worthwhile. Personally I am not convinced that cap and trade is the way to go. But at least the House is doing something. I think insentivising green behaviour may be more sensible than punishing ungreen behaviour.
I think that the left needs to get serious about talking about why what it believes in is important. I think that right is great at throwing out a low tax, personal responsibilty message. The left needs to counter that. Government action on the environment is needed from America to show leadership, and because industry isn't going to do it all by itself. Healthcare reform is important not because the vast majority of those who have perfectly adequate health coverage but because those who don't can be plunged into bankruptcy or worse in a way that is frankly immoral in the world's largest economy, with the discovery of a tumor. These are real issues, not political footballs to be tossed around at will. There are consequences to what happens in the next few months!
As one of Peter DeFazio's constituents, I felt I should find out what he really thinks about cap and trade. Apparently, it's the trade part that bugs him. I'm not sure I agree with him but his argument seems perfectly rational.
excerpt follows:
DeFazio has also become increasingly scathing of the push by the Democratic leadership - in both Congress and the Oregon Legislature - to set up a "cap and trade" system aimed at reducing greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
To DeFazio, who has always had a finely honed populist outrage with Wall Street, the idea of creating another financial market is folly.
"It is just infinitely game-able," he said, relating how Europe is now trading in "carbon futures" that give industries additional emission permits now in exchange for, say, trees that may or may not be planted in the future.
"These financial people, I mean, they are very smart people and they can figure out a way to monetize anything and it would just be nuts to go down that path."
That doesn't mean DeFazio is a climate change skeptic. He argues that it should be done with "old fashioned" regulation, of the same kind that reduced smog over our cities and cleaned the filth out of our rivers.
I am a very old-fashioned guy. First you inventory the sources of pollution, then you cap them. You get people a schedule to reduce. You monitor them, and you fine the heck out of them if they don’t meet them [the standards].
Persuter wrote:
"This is called the "straw man" fallacy. It is not an argument. No one is suggesting criminalizing air conditioning or eliminating CO2emissions."
And no one claimed it would be criminal. He was obviously, to anyone who doesn't wear a helmet to the dinner table, kidding about the criminalizing part. Hey, you probably shouldn't point out the beam in his eye and ignore the straw man in yours.
Mike in Maryland wrote:
"Utilities are in the business of making money..."
Exactly, which is exactly why the notion that this bill is only going to cost the average American the cost of a postage stamp per day is absolutely ludicrous on its face.
And it is pretty damn hilarious that the guy who touted solar energy in Germany forgot to mention that the only reason there is any profit at all is because grid operators must pay a tariff to those producing renewable energy. This tariff is intended to make renewable sources cost-competitive. The costs of these tariffs are then PASSED ON TO THE CONSUMER. Wow, you think that bit of information may have been just a wee bit relevant to the discussion Einstein?
http://www.bmu.de/files/pdfs/allgemein/application/pdf/eeg_en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act
But hey, don't worry, it isn't like you lied about solar being competitive in Germany, did you? Oh, wait, you did. My bad.
Dwight wrote:
"Excellence demonstration of exactly the type of wacked out caricatures that this sort of legislation has to fight against to get passed."
Yeah a guy clearly kidding around is so much worse than Jim calling people who oppose cap and trade Nazis, isn't it? Because as the sane among us all know, lobbying against this bill is just as bad, if not worse than systematically murdering six million jews and starting a war that killed tens of millions more. To borrow the language from the NAACP James Byrd ad: "Everytime you lobby against Cap and Trade, you send the Jews to Auschwitz all over again."
Adam wrote:
"No you're not. I'd love to see a "die-hard Democrat" who thinks a massively watered-down version of cap-and-trade..."
So the forty four Democrats who voted against the bill today aren't diehard Democrats? And the left claims it is the Republicans who are doctrinaire and rigid.
And I get a kick out of the people citing that $175 figure who don't also include the additional $770 mentioned by the CBO and who don't mention any of the caveats included in the CBO analysis, such as their unwillingness to discuss the yearly GDP loss that will result from this bill. As the WSJ stated in an article earlier today, the CBO estimate has so many caveats and qualifications it is absolutely worthless. Furthermore, do you people think that when the caps become more restrictive that it won't cause an even further increase in energy prices? As Warren Buffet, the lefts's former favorite go-to guy on all things economic said yesterday in an interview on CNBC "cap and trade is a HUGE (emphasis mine) regressive tax". Claims this will only result in an increase that is the equivalent of a postage stamp per day are, frankly, hilarious and totally unbelievable, particularly when you consider the multiple other studies such as those done by MIT and the Wharton School indicating Cap and Trade could cost up to 20 times that number per year. And it doesn't take a genius to realize the requirements for China and India to implement similar plans lest they be slapped with tariffs will be, uh, how should we put this, detrimental to the economy. It is almost as if the people who passed this had an "the economy be damned" attitude.
And since the people here like to cite studies from foreign countries(even though they conveniently leave out the parts that totally annihilate their arguments), it is a little odd that they don't cite the studies from Australia or Spain demonstrating that the whole "green jobs" bullshit actually result in the loss of more than twice as many jobs created.
And finally to those who claim this bill will pass the Senate, an AP report that was published less than a half an hour after its passage stated that Harry Reid indicated this bill's passage in the Senate would most likely not happen. James Inhofe was more blunt when he stated the bill would be "killed" in the Senate. The fact that 67 Senators voted to prohibit reconciliation would indicate to most people that it probably won't pass. But then again, maybe we are just Nazis, right Jim?
Ilmellas,
The 'Nazi' tag you are using on people whose opinion you don't agree with can be capped.
Unless you are a member of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County, or supporter of the organization's President Joyce E. Thomann, which then would explain why you like to call everyone a 'Nazi'.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Jarv, I wasn't talking about the cost of physically doing the vote, I was alluding to the cost of getting the votes.
By all accounts, there was a significant amount of horse-trading going on the last 48 hours to get enough votes to pass this monstrosity. Presumably, a lot of promises to support pork and pet projects. That never ends well for the taxpayers.
In any case, any form of reform is better than the alternative of doing nothing.
What's surprising is to have a government actually tackling serious issues like energy and health care, which have been lip-served for decades... but left to rot to their cores in status-quo limbos.
Oil addiction has to end. So does the corporate piracy attached to it.
The death-grip health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals have on people, has to end.
Does (did) one single Republican ever propose one single energy or health care solution that didn't kowtow to big oil or big insurance. Or propose anything at all. No.
Markymark wrote (in part): insentivising green behaviour
Shame on you. Not only are you debasing the English language, you are doing it while spelling impaired.
Lots of people think it's neat to use the new very incentivize. That's an awkward way to say "encourage" or "encourage through subsidy." And if the latter, the word "subsidize" is much, much better.
But politics and political discussion has debased most of our language. As a dentist's son I still shudder every time I see "impact" used as a verb.
Not a troll actually. I have the receipts from my contributions to the Obama campaign. I almost forgot how if anyone disagrees with the master thesis on 538 they are automaticlly vilfied as GOP trolls.
The reason that this is stupid is that during a depression where unemployment rates will soon be near 12% this bill ensures that another million or so jobs will emigrate to another country lie India or China where environmental regulations are non-existant. THIS BILL WILL WORSEN THE VERY ILLS IT WAS DESIGNED TO IMPROVE. But WTF do I know, I'm just a troll - but a troll who understands how the real world operates.
"This exactly the kind of overreaching that I was afraid of last year when Obama won. If this makes it through the Senate, I predict a GOP Congress after 2010. I know I will vote that way and I am a die-hard Democrat"
No you're not. I'd love to see a "die-hard Democrat" who thinks a massively watered-down version of cap-and-trade (which he and many other Democrats campaigned on, of course) is "overreaching". Would that be the global warming denier die-hard liberal faction of the Democratic party? That's a big one, let me tell you.
Go away, troll.
Solar power isn't competitive in Germany, and you know it.
Germany's electricity genertaion as of 2005:
48.9% coal and lignite
27.5% nuclear
10.2% natural gas
4.5% hydroelectricity
4.1% wind
1.6% oil and diesel
3.2% all other, including solar
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4357238.stm
German electricity production in 2007:
14.1% all renewables, including
6.2% wind power
3,3% water power
3.1% biomass
1.5% all others, including solar
http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/Content/Publikationen/STATmagazin/Energy/2008__2/PDF2008__2,property=file.pdf
Solar power isn't competitive in Germany. Just because the German government installed a single solar project doesn't mean it is, and the Germans know it. But thanks for the ad hominems; nice to know that the truth burns you.
IMHO, the real problem with the whole "Cap & Trade" issue is that it has metamorphed a host of environmental, business and household questions into a simplistic economic equation. Plant A emits too much carbon, then Plant A buys carbon credits from Plant B, passing the increased cost of goods sold to the ultimate purchaser. NO efficiencies gained. NO reductions in pollution. Net results, Congress has "done something green". The public gets yet another bill for government intervention in the shape of either higher prices or higher taxes.
Jeff wrote:
"This is the sort of disappointment you get when: 1. you confuse a Democratic landslide with a "liberal" landslide; and 2. you assume your man is more moral than other mortal pols and will sacrifice his self interest for the cause."
Insightful point.
One can only wonder what kind "disappointment" the Republicans can expect after devoting several months now to a narrative in which it is 'absolutely clear' that Obama is "Far Left" and some kind of "Messiah".
The Republicans can't have it both ways, after all.
Either they can maintain their current, largely delusional, stance that Obama is the re-incarnation of Che Guevara bent on turning the nation into a Marxist hell-hole or they can switch to a new tack in which Obama is a "let-down" to the Left who believed in him.
In American politics, the Left is used to being "let-down" on a regular basis. Nader showed the futility of abandoning the Democratic Party, however. And the notion that the Left will vote Republican as an alternative is ridiculous. Thus, the Republicans have no traction to be gained by trying to split the Democratic Party with the "let-down" narrative. Still, that doesn't mean that they aren't tone-deaf enough to try it, though it would completely undermine everything they have said up until now.
And if they split the difference between "Satanic Socialist" and "Incompetent Let-Down", then they have an incompetent Satanist. This is not very scary at all, and not suitable for fear-mongering purposes. Likewise, the idea that Obama is a mere mortal is weak, since the entire idea of Obama as Messiah has been a creation of the Republicans from the start, and one that most people reject. Thus any roaring from the Republican throngs along the lines of "What do you think of your Messiah now?" is likely to be met by blank looks from the electorate....much like all of the other Republican talking points.
One more thing: I seem to recall that McCain supported the idea of cap-and-trade during the campaign. Is McCain now part of the putatively-growing "Far Left"?
Or is "Far Left" just another sloppy term that wingnuts over-use, much like "traitor", until it loses all impact and meaning?
Had to laugh when I heard someone call it a "Watermelon" bill. Green on the outside, red on the inside. Ain't it the truth....
Leadership again unable to line up votes Pelosi-Hoyer combo demonstrate total incompetence in aligning the democratic movement.
Where is the Democratic "Hammer"?
Why is everyone against cap and trade? It is uses markets and competition to accelerate our economy from carbon based to clean energy. We are in a similar situation to GM/Detroit 25 years ago. They could continue to make clunkers or be fuel efficient. Keeping the cash cow helped them in the short term, but now they are dead.
Every one knows that eventually we will run out of carbon energy. If we innovate now, then the USA will be a generation ahead of the world in energy tech.
Everytime a new environmental regulatory regime is brought in, the industries start the clock for the end of the world.
So far, they've always been wrong.
Todd,
On many issues Obama is quite far left. I assume most of the readers of this blog agree and like it that way. My point is that most of Congress, including many of the Dems elected in the these much ballyhooed "new blue" states you folks are so excited about (Florida, Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, etc.) are actually quite conservative. Obama is a lefty generally, and it is clear that he crafted a winning message in 2008. But was he clear enough on the issues, and on his priorities and policies, to craft a governing coalition. THAT is very much in doubt.
And you are missing the point about the GOP. They won't appeal to disappointed liberals under any circumstances. But they will appeal to center right independents, of which there are a lot. Their disappointment is of a different kind, a disappointment with Obama's lack of moderation.
Jeff, as a center-right voter, I'd like to agree with you, but I don't see the mainstream GOP anywhere near the political center in this country. This was Goldwater's complaint as well. He ran for president on the extreme right flank of the Republican Party, and he was so far right that he didn't pick up any moderate or liberal votes and he lost in a landslide. He left office as one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate. In the interim, the only significant change in his views was some temperance on his formerly brash view of foreign policy.
This country has been trending progressive on nearly all fronts, yet the GOP has not changed with the times except to embrace the religiosity of the Bible Belt. The only hope for the modern-day Republican Party to remain relevant can be found in those Jesus camps and Christian rock concert halls. Their constituents are aging and dying, the racial makeup of the country is becoming rapidly less white-dominant, and the non-religious demographic has soared over the past ten to twenty years. All of those three major demographic shifts strongly benefit the more adaptive Democratic Party.
There are some "good Republicans" more toward the middle, particularly on social issues, who I admire and can definitely see myself voting for. I will work to elect Jon Huntsman, Jr., as President Obama's successor in 2016 (hopefully by then the humbled GOP will be ready to nominate a candidate for national office with a chance of winning) and if Charlie Crist runs in 2012, I'm sure he'll get crushed in the primary, but I'll back him all the way. But I'm tired of social authoritarianism on the right, and from both parties, I'm tired of hearing one thing and seeing another. The Bush administration did it to a criminal degree, and the Obama administration does not seem to be doing things radically different.
But considering that any GOP contender likely to be on the November ballot in 2010 or 2012 will probably be in favor of denying my friend John the right to marry another man, against ending torture and foreign occupations, and the kind of loudmouth who calls everything he doesn't like a Cold War-era scary "-ism" buzzword, I don't see voting Republican as a reasonable alternative barring an exceptional candidate.
Well...being an independent-minded Left of center voter, I have my own thoughts on this.
Personally, I'm a bit doubtful that this "cap-and-trade" system will be that much functional, since it relies on the very people who have been responsible for all the damage to our climate and whom have steadily profited from pollution to somehow change their ways for self-profit. Plus, I can remember when such a program was originally touted by conservatives as the "free-market" approach to environmental regulation, and as an alternative to the "liberal/left" idea of outright direct regulation and carbon taxes. That "cap-and-trade" has now become the default "liberal" position reflects not to well on how much political discourse has been shoved well to the Right, and how far more effective solutions that would actually require some teeth and sacrifice on the part of business and industry have been pushed off the table....similarly to how single-payer has been treated by the "liberals" in the health care debate.
What I am seeing is the typical scenario:
1) Democrats get elected due to the excessess of the far Right Republicans, then promise far-reaching reforms to satisfy their liberal base;
2) The Republicans and the Right-Wing Noise Machine and the Establishment Villagers immediately scream about the dire threat of "Socialism!!!!!" and bring out the corporate lobbyists and Astroturfers;
3) The ConservaDems then shriek about how the Dems are going waaaaay too far and waaaaaaaay too far to the "Left" and must win back the "Center", and thusly use their powers to weaken the bill to something more palatable to Big Business and their wealthy allies;
4) The bill passes the House barely, with no Repub support;
5) Which gives the Senate, dominated by the usual GOP/ConservaDem alliance, to weaken the bill still further, if not kill it outright;
6) Which presents the Dem base with a bitter choice: support what crumbs of "reform" are left and take that as a "victory", or oppose the bill along with the Repubs and get the full blame from the Village Media for killing their supposed last chance for "reform".
And then, after the bill is passed and proves to be very much as toothless as advertised, the disgruntled Dem base and the Left is faced with the same tired threat of either rewarding the ConservaDems/DLC/Obamabots who used and betrayed them with their votes in 2010 and 2012, or sitting on their heels and risking the inevitable Repub comeback and thusly getting all the blame thereof for allowing the Right to be revived.
In short, Obama 2009 is beginning to look a lot like Bill Clinton 1993. And we all know what happened the following year, too.
Just sayin'.
Anthony
"Solar power isn't competitive in Germany, and you know it."
Starting 1997, Germany began focusing heavily on renewable energy. In 2000, 6.3% of their energy was renewable. By 2007, it had jumped to 14%. Showing 2005 vs. 2007 is a ridiculous way to measure improvement, especially since we're talking about a large scale change in a country. Believe it or not, a country just can't replace 25% of their energy sources in two years.
Changing our energy to low cost (long term it's just amazing), domestic energy is really a great move economically. There have been complaints that it will kill jobs. I see several things: Re-structuring the grid (which is in dire need of modernization), maintaining our new resources, research, new, growing markets in personal energy sources (products and services), exportation of our energy products.
Furthermore, one of the biggest issues with our economy is our deficit. ...our trade deficit that keeps growing because of our thirst for oil. That's money that does not stay in our economy.
The reason so much misinformation flies about is due to the fear from energy companies that there will be external competition. It's the same reason insurance companies are trying to spread misinformation about health care.
Anthony, just to complicate matters, some Republicans, led by Greg Mankiw, are now backing carbon taxes as an alternative to cap and trade. A couple of Senators even proposed a bill that would levy a carbon tax and cut payroll taxes by an equal amount. One thinks that the main point here is not to advance market-based solutions, but to find reasons to oppose whatever the other party does without looking too callous.
gbthrone said...
IMHO, the real problem with the whole "Cap & Trade" issue is that it has metamorphed a host of environmental, business and household questions into a simplistic economic equation. Plant A emits too much carbon, then Plant A buys carbon credits from Plant B, passing the increased cost of goods sold to the ultimate purchaser. NO efficiencies gained. NO reductions in pollution.
Wrong.
The word 'Cap' is in the formula. Cap means a ceiling is established, and that ceiling is set below the amount produced in total.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Jeff said...
On many issues Obama is quite far left. I assume most of the readers of this blog agree and like it that way.
Far left from your perspective, maybe, but centrist to a majority of people.
After all, when you are at the 20 point on the spectrum, 50 is much farther away from your 20 point than 0 is.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Zetal,
One thing you'll notice about the right-wingers is that they pick and choose an (apparent) arbitrary starting point to begin their comparison. That starting point, though, is of their choosing so that they can 'make their point'.
For instance, Global Climate Change - the current 'favored' 'base point' for the right-wing, GCC-deniers is 1997. If they knew anything at all about the theories behind Global Climate Change, they would know that the theories state that it is a decades-long, if not centuries-long, process. If they knew anything about climate, they would know that there are variations from one year to the next, from one decade to the next, and from one century to the next, in local weather.
An example - Maryland had a drought in 2001 that extended into 2002. The year 2001 was one of the ten driest years in recorded weather history for the state. In 2003, though, the rains fell, and fell, and fell. By the time December 31 rolled around, Baltimore had received more than 21 inches in above normal rainfall. So far this year, we're at about 4 inches above, but the first three months were very dry. If the right-wingers were trying to 'prove' that the Baltimore area is getting drier each year, they would set their 'target date' for 2003, the wettest on record, instead of using decades of historical data, to 'prove' their point.
I bet the right-wingers don't realize that 'average high temperature' their local weather reporter tells people every day for that date is an average of the temperatures on that date over the last 30 years. I'd bet that many think it is the average temperature of every high for that date since weather records began in their locale.
In summary, it might be gratifying to correct their false assumptions, and arbitrary starting points, but they will just continue to select a starting point that is favorable to their argument, no matter how stupid it makes their argument look to those who know something about the subject being discussed. Sometimes, though, the gratification of showing their stupidity can be quite ... well ... gratifying!
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Zetal, you've made a couple of major mistakes.
First off, the trade deficit is a sign of economic health, not weakness. Our trade deficit grows when the economy is strong and diminshes when it's weak (like today) because we consume more foreign goods when people are wealthier.
Second, the claim under discussion was solar power, not wind. The claim that Germany does got, or can ever get, significant power from solar is simply false despite what you and others have said. Too many clouds, too far north, no means of storage.
As for wind power, you have to build several times the stated capacity for wind plants because the wind usually isn't blowing hard enough for them to generate significant electricity. Note that new wind power construction and installation are falling, now that Germany no longer has the cash for toys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany
Stepper said
'Markymark wrote (in part): insentivising green behaviour
Shame on you. Not only are you debasing the English language, you are doing it while spelling impaired.
Lots of people think it's neat to use the new very incentivize. That's an awkward way to say "encourage" or "encourage through subsidy." And if the latter, the word "subsidize" is much, much better.
But politics and political discussion has debased most of our language. As a dentist's son I still shudder every time I see "impact" used as a verb.'
---------------------------
Yeah didn't get the spelling right there at all. But although it might be clumsy I would argue that what cap and trade is all about is incentives, given that the definition of an incentive is surely an encouragement to do something that you wouldn't otherwise do.
Also I have a great difficulty with language conservatives. English as a language is an ever changing language. One of its beauties is its adaptability. (Shakespeare was a genius at bending the language to his needs!)
@ markymark
I don't mean to pile on (I usually enjoy and agree with your posts) but you invariably make two spelling mistakes: you use "there" whenever" their" is correct and "its" when "it's" is called for.
Sweet Will would not approve!
Brian Jenkins said...
First off, the trade deficit is a sign of economic health, not weakness.
What?
When an economy is producing, it has goods to meet the domestic demand, plus it has goods to export, meaning INCOME to the country.
When an economy is NOT producing, it has domestic demand that can't be met, necessitating the importation of goods.
As examples:
1. Petroleum. "Drill, baby, drill" was droned on and on by the GOOPers for what reason?
2. Coal. We export it, thus gain money from people overseas buying it.
3. Wheat, corn and other farm products. We have more of those products and can export them to countries whose internal demand is greater than they can meet themselves.
If a trade deficit is a sign of wealth, why did every GOOPer bemoan a rising trade deficit from Ronnie Ray-Gun forward (we didn't suffer much trade deficit prior to Ronnie Ray-Gun, except for petroleum from the mid-60s forward)?
Has GOOPer logic shrunk so far that the logic of "Through the Looking Glass" is more logical than GOOPer logic?
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
The problem of anthropogenic climate change is so huge and intractable that no cap-and-trade bill is going to help significantly. We need renewables because they are cleaner, do not exacerbate the trade deficit, and generate good domestic jobs, but we can encourage them without a cap-and-trade bill. And digging up coal and burning it is so darn cheap that nothing short of a massive carbon tax is ever going to stop us from doing it. And if we DID do enact such a tax, it really WOULD have a massive impact on the economy.
And the thing is Obama and the Democrats know this. So they propose a bill they kind of hope won't pass the Senate. They make sure the bill has nothing more than window dressing so in case it DOES pass, it won't really have much of a negative impact on the economy, but it WILL make the Democrats look and feel good. And if the Republicans in the Senate are successful in killing it, they can be portrayed as enemies of the planet, and Congress can still pass subsidies for renewables.
Now health care reform really IS important and achievable, so the Democrats made sure reconciliation was an option there. But knowing that the defeat of cap-and-trade is in their strategic interest, Obama and the Democrats removed reconciliation as a possibility.
Mike in Maryland, you are a moron.
I was mocking Jim and criticizing him for his Nazi references. Perhaps you didn't read the following that he wrote:
My only concern is that they are going to neuter the cap even more than they have. I think it speaks volumes that the netroots have barely noticed that this bill passed today. We need to get ready to lobby folks in the Senate hard, because the NAZIS (emphasis mine) like all of the PeteKents in their underwear are going to flood the zone.
Can you read, or do you just like making stuff up, like you did with the whole Germany thing, when you decided to leave out the huge subsidies and tariffs necessary to make solar "profitable". Or maybe you can't debate in good faith and misattributions and falsehoods are just your thing. Of course, what more would one expect from a guy who thinks GOOPer is funny rather than moronic, which it clearly is. Why don't you go back to citing articles so you can be embarrassed when somebody calls your bluff and looks them up.
Mike, look at the US trade deficit over time. It widens during expansions and narrows during recessions, including the current one. Here's a chart for you.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SXu-IBM6k3I/AAAAAAAAEXE/Q2KYO8ce_9Q/s1600-h/TradeDeficitGDP.jpg
Notice how the trade deficit narrowed during the early 80s, the early 90s, and the last couple of years- recessions. It expanded during the late 80s, late 90s, and 2000s expansions.
As for the specifics, coal is a very minor net export item- we exported a net of 24.3 million tons of coal in January-September 2008. Coal costs roughly $50 a ton, giving us coal exports for those nine months of $1.2 billion, trivial compared to our trade deficit.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/html/t7p01p1.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/coalnews/coalmar.html
Farm products exports are falling because the rest of the world is joining us in recession and not buying what we have to sell, not because of climate change ghosts and goblins. Deepening our recession by making energy more costly only deepends their recessions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/business/10agriculture.html
As for oil, like it or not, demand is extremely inelastic. There's no alternative to the internal combustion engine, so we'll be burning gasoline in today's quantities or greater for a while yet. The price spikes and crashes have been due to very small shifts in supply and demand, and more supply can only help. Most people know this; that's why "Drill, baby, drill!" is genuinely very popular. People have to drive to work, drive their kids to school, drive to buy groceries, and $5 a gallon gas only hurts their ability to do things they need to do to live their lives. It doesn't result in a mass conversion to Gaiaism- you can't live that way in most places.
If you're going to argue economics, learn how the world really is.
Brian Jenkins said...
Mike, look at the US trade deficit over time. It widens during expansions and narrows during recessions, including the current one.
Typical moronic post - confusing cause for effect, thinking effect is cause, and thinking it good.
The cock crows before the sun rises, therefore the sun won't rise unless and until the cock crows.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Go take a entry-level economics course, and argue your philosophy with even a first year professor or instructor, and you'll receive a complete fail for your grade.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Brian Jenkins: look at the US trade deficit over time. It widens during expansions and narrows during recessions, including the current one.
But that's not necessarily a sign of domestic health or weakness. It's a sign of global slowdown in trade.
If you export $100 and import $1,100, then you've got a trade deficit of $1,000. If overall trade drops by half, then you export $50 and import $500, so you've got a trade deficit of $450. But that more-than-halving of the trade deficit has little to do with relative economic strength. It's just that people everywhere are buying less stuff. And because we import so much more than we export, the same percentage drop in both imports and exports creates an absolute drop in the difference between them.
To Brian Jenkins:
Solar today is a very different beast from when Carter put it on the White House roof.
In 2008 Germany installed 1500MW of solar photovoltaics and Spain 2500MW. Spain's installation number was almost as much as the entire world's in 2007, of 2826MW (these are using EPIA and Worldwatch figures). In 2009 the market will likely fall slightly from 6000MW in 2008 to around 5000MW. However module costs are falling and as demand rises and the recession eases, installations are projected to reach 20GW/year by 2013. (a GW is 1000MW)
The solar photovoltaic industry was worth $30billion in 2008 and has seen large scale growth year on year, much like Wind. Wind technology is on a similar growth curve but is 5-9 years ahead of solar in terms of technology (ie their growth curve started earlier) and in 5 years we can expect to see solar achieving the kind of installation numbers wind does today (and wind will be a lot higher).
Solar PV is predicted to reach competiveness with conventional fuels in Italy next year, rapidly followed by Spain in 2011 and Germany and other countries in 2013-15. Most countries should reach 'grid parity' by 2017 (meaning solar costs as little as or less than conventional power stations to install) and PV has been projected to be 12% of the EU's electricity supply by 2020 purely on current incentive schemes (although the whole point of these schemes is to bring grid parity quicker so by the time that happens these tariffs will be phased out).
This is not even including concentrated solar thermal, which has around 500MW working now, and several GW in construction, with 14GW cumulative predicted to be installed by 2013. 7.5GW of this figure is in the US. Several banks, utilities and insurance companies are in talks to build a 100GW distributed CSP network in Northern Africa to supply 15% of the EU's power by 2030, to the tube of $500billion.
Concentrating photovoltaics, the youngest sibling of the solar family, installed only around 10MW in 2008 but will see around 30MW in 2009, 70 in 2010 and projects 400MW by 2012, at which point it expects to reach grid parity in most 'sunbelt' regions.
basing your assessment of an industry on where it was in 1980 is not a good business model.
Tomas L. Martin
Solar Analyst, Wind Prospect Group
This is the sort of thing that leaves me very uneasy as an observor of Obama and his supporters:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/28/michael-crowley-barack-obama-usa
"The money will be found", the "economy is likely to pick up", the fortunes of health care will be "revived" by the President. Not to worry. Faith base politics.
Mike, you spout off silly talking points that take five seconds to disprove, then call people morons when they do. (Many economics professors have reviewed my work, Mike. They gave me A's.) You're clearly not in the reality-based world, and further communication with you is pointless. Go back to praying at the Church of Gaia and its Twin Messiahs Al and Barack.
Mr. Martin, look in your back files and Im sure that you'll see similarly optimistic projections of installed solar power and competitiveness for 2005. And 2000. And 1990. And 1980. Talks about pie-in-the-sky projects that will never happen aren't proof of anything but some people's willingness to delude themselves. 500MW is trivial compared to the terawatts (that's millions of megawatts) of electric power used by Europe and North America.
Industrial society is CO2-based and has been for 200 years. It will be so until something better comes along, and solar isn't it.
Yes Brian,
there were similar projections made in those dates, and they have been true. The industry has grown substantially in the last decade, from 200MW/year in 2000 to 6000MW/year+CSP+CPV last year.
Any industry takes time to develop - the cost of increasing manufacturing and improving research is high and you cannot go from 0 to 100% overnight. Generally all technologies go in cycles where the defining feature is how long it takes for capacity to double. Back in the 1970s there were very few computers, by the 1980s there were more but they were by no means ubiquitous, by the mid 1990s most households had one.
Wind is following a similar trend and has now reached the point where a doubling in capacity is a large chunk of new energy installations. Solar is a few years behind. 28GW of wind was installed in 2008, 30% more than in 2007, giving a doubling time of just over three years.
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3219
Solar installed 125% more PV in 2008 than 2007, so it is doubling in less than a year (although 2009 will be an exception in most technologies due to the financial crisis, although stimulus plans may aid that)
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3219
Simple economic principles dictate the exponential growth of such technologies. Arguing that they are smaller now than other technologies is a complete strawman - coal, gas and nuclear will all have experienced similar growth curves in the decades following their invention, and still do today, just at a much slower growth rate dependent on demand rather than supply.
More renewables are now installed per year than fossil fuel generation. The ratio will likely continue to grow each year, meaning that as CO2 based generation is phased out it will be replaced by renewables and the share of overall installations will rise.
These are not pie-in the sky projects by the way. I work in the industry and these are the latest numbers of fully-funded, under construction projects around the world. Wind and Solar are viable industries and like the computer industry before them they will continue to grow in importance, no matter what you believe.
LOL at this quote from Brian:
Mike, you spout off silly talking points that take five seconds to disprove, then call people morons when they do. (Many economics professors have reviewed my work, Mike. They gave me A's.) You're clearly not in the reality-based world, and further communication with you is pointless. Go back to praying at the Church of Gaia and its Twin Messiahs Al and Barack.
First off...I thought that wingnut conservatives didn't believe in the "reality based world"; they made their own reality. Isn't that what the Neo-CONS were telling us all throughout the Iraq debacle??
Secondly...I wonder which "economic professors" were grading your efforts, Brian: Professors Laffer, Gramm, Limbaugh, Palin, and Santelli???
If you wouldn't attempt to run such moronic smack here, you wouldn't be called out as a moron.
Just sayin'.
Anthony
Oh, wait up...I forgot about one other source of Brian's wisdom: the Samuel J. Wurzelbacher Academy of Colon-Picked Half-Facts. Also serving faux plumbers, foreign media experts, and horny right-wing males alike.
Anthony
Brian Jenkins:
Mike, you spout off silly talking points that take five seconds to disprove, then call people morons when they do. (Many economics professors have reviewed my work, Mike. They gave me A's.)
I don't know about that. It seems that the comment about confusing cause and effect regarding trade deficits during recessions was pretty accurate. I followed up with a more detailed post on it. It looks like simple math to me. Am I right, or do your professors give me an F? (And if I'm wrong, could you please spend five seconds telling me why?)
The price spikes and crashes have been due to very small shifts in supply and demand, and more supply can only help. Most people know this; that's why "Drill, baby, drill!" is genuinely very popular. People have to drive to work, drive their kids to school, drive to buy groceries, and $5 a gallon gas only hurts their ability to do things they need to do to live their lives.
First, "drill baby drill," while popular, referred to offshore drilling, and that oil won't have an effect on the market until it comes onto the market--which would be about 8 years. Looking for drilling now for immediate price relief is unrealistic regardless of what people may believe about the matter (and believing won't make it true).
Second, $5 a gallon gasoline need not have the slightest effect on the ability for people to do things in their lives, especially if they start driving different cars. If the price of gas went from $3 to $5, then no one would have to pay much more to drive around just as much as they do today (including all the activities you cite) if their next car is that much more efficient. Our fuel efficiency today is terrible. If we make different choices, and not terribly difficult ones, it can be a lot better. And it's not about taking away people's trucks or minivans; it's about having their next truck or minivan get 50% better mileage. If we can't do that, we're pretty pathetic as a nation, aren't we?
Tomas is showing just how the public view on alternative energy really is skewed. I had even considered changing degrees to work in the electrical engineering field (I went electronics instead) because the prospects were looking so good when it came to energy.
It seems common practice to make renewable energy look insufficient by using data from the 1980s. Then on top of that, acting as if new technology takes over a market over night if it is worth using. If randomly, the US said it wanted to replace all Interstates and highways with new ones, you wouldn't see the entire country have new roads in ten years. There is no way.
@Brian "First off, the trade deficit is a sign of economic health, not weakness. Our trade deficit grows when the economy is strong and diminshes when it's weak (like today) because we consume more foreign goods when people are wealthier."
Between 1984-1998, our country averaged a deficit of $101.5 billion yearly (those 15 years totaled $1.5 trillion in exported value). The amounts were also fairly stable. This is supported by your statement and several economic theorists. Between 1999 and 2008, the deficit skyrocketed. In 1999, it was $265 billion from 1998's $166 billion. The peak was in 2006 at $760 billion then went down to $695 billion in 2008. During this stretch, the deficit averaged $541 billion yearly (total of $5.4 trillion over 10 years).
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt
Our country has never had this high of a deficit. But I'm guessing you just think we're just really, really healthy right now since we had so much growth leading up to 2008.
"As for wind power, you have to build several times the stated capacity for wind plants because the wind usually isn't blowing hard enough for them to generate significant electricity."
I hope you weren't citing your source as that wikipedia page.
1) It has been tagged as being out of date.
2) It says nothing about what you just said.
3) The page hasn't been edited since May so this information you may be referring to hasn't just disappeared overnight.
Furthermore, your statement that you need to build more for the capacity is false. Larger turbines/blades have been in production. The larger the blade, the less wind is needed for operation. The efficiency has been rising contrary to what you claim.
I am sick and tired of "Republicans" like Mark claiming the party has to be socially left. It is NOT true. That is the media refrain...do you REALLY think the media wants Republicans to do well??
Americans are getting more liberal on gay rights, while getting somewhat more conservative on abortion. Meaning Reps should support civil unions (but still traditional marriage) and also keep being the party that defends innocent life. Republicans need to communicate better and put the Democrats on the defensive on social issues (where Dems tend to be out of the mainstream, not Reps). I mean, goddamn, in a New Jersey Congressional race in 2008, the Democrat bitch was assaulting the Republican for not being pro-abortion ENOUGH. How does this happen, when the Republican's position was actually the position of over 70% of new jerseyans?
I'd like social liberals (of which there are way too many) to tell me how their movement has helped America in the last four decades. Easier divorce laws -> divorce rates many times higher than before. Legal abortion and birth control -> your daughters will be much more promiscuous than your mother was. Illegitimacy is 40% and rising. The end of prohibitions on gay activity -> the AIDS epidemic. (Look at the time frame.) So let's hear the justification.
That doesn't mean Republicans don't need to retool their message. They need to go after the malleable young and urban and suburban voters with a practical message. But that does not include forgetting what's right.
John said...
keep being the party that defends innocent life.
Ahem.
What party was in power when the Iraq War was planned and (mal)executed? What party was in power when tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of INNOCENT Iraqis were killed?
What party voted against SCHIPS, a bill that is intended to keep children healthy, even when their parents want, but aren't able to afford, insurance?
What party doesn't want to provide at least one healthy meal a day to underprivileged school children?
What party wanted to classify ketchup as a vegetable?
Or do you mean, when you state "the party that defends innocent life" that the definition of innocent life is restricted to Americans who are not yet out of the womb?
Sometimes it is easy to come up with a slogan that seems to solve a problem, but that doesn't solve the problem. To solve a problem, you first have to study the problem to find out what causes the problem, and then you might, but not always, be able to start solving the problem.
And by the way - if no rights go with the civil unions, then no thanks. Full equality of all rights is what we want, not platitudinal slogans.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
John:
Americans are getting more liberal on gay rights, while getting somewhat more conservative on abortion.
I don't think that's really true about abortion once one looks behind the numbers. Most people have a problem with late-term abortions, but many of those same peole find earlier abortions acceptable. Does that make them pro-choice or pro-life? If many "pro-life" people allow exceptions for rape and incest, does that make them "pro-choice" in some circumstances? Most Americans are in the muddled middle, where they have been for some time. Good discussion in The Atlantic: http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/05/are_americans_galluping_toward_the_pro-life_label.php
I'd like social liberals (of which there are way too many) to tell me how their movement has helped America in the last four decades. Easier divorce laws -> divorce rates many times higher than before. Legal abortion and birth control -> your daughters will be much more promiscuous than your mother was. Illegitimacy is 40% and rising. The end of prohibitions on gay activity -> the AIDS epidemic. (Look at the time frame.)
Women's movement -> greater economic and social opportunities for half the population.
Anti-discrimination movement -> greater opportunities for all minority groups.
Legal abortion and birth control -> fewer women dying in the streets from botched procedures. Also birth control arguably means fewer abortions than there would be otherwise.
Easier divorce laws -> Fewer unhappy families. (Just because people are forced to stay together doesn't mean its best for them, or their children.) By the way, divorce rates are higher in conservative states, as are the highest teenage birth rates. Please check this instructive chart from yesterday's NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/06/27/opinion/20090627blowchart.html
The end of prohibition on gay activity -> government out of people's bedrooms. Also, it's absolutely ridiculous to connect gay activity to promiscuity. Heterosexuals and homosexuals can be equally monogamous or equally promiscuous. I see no evidence that orientation has anything to do with promiscuity. Those seriously concerned about promiscuity should be supporting marriage--gay and straight.
Eurpoeans, with more liberal policies than we do, have lower rates of divorce, lower out of wedlock births, etc. So even if those stats have increased in the US, it's unlikely that it's due to "liberal" policy changes.
They need to go after the malleable young and urban and suburban voters with a practical message. But that does not include forgetting what's right.
Could "what's right" include letting people make up their own minds on these issues instead of having government telling them what to do? That would be more of a libertarian bent--which I think today's Republican party could use. Democrats have gained from dropping or opening up on certain issues such as abortion (there are some pro-life Dems in Congress) and gun control (ditto). It's time to drop the culture war issues, at least if Republicans want to remain a viable party. It's even in keeping with some versions of true conservative principles which include keeping government out of private lives instead of enforcing one version of morality.
I haven't heard anyone explain clearly, without resorting to talking points or leaning on broad assumptions about government regulatory behavior in general, why cap-and-trade has been perfectly effective at reducing SO2 but will be a failure at best and an economic catastrophe at worst when applied to CO2. And how is the Federal program different than the regional programs and plans currently in place? The Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord, the Western Climate Initiative and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative all include some variation on cap-and-trade. Those programs cover just about every part of the country outside of the Deep South, and if those states don't think that a cap-and-trade system will be a burden on industry and energy consumers, then why should we assume that a Federal program would be that much more disastrous?
@ John
do you REALLY think the media wants Republicans to do well??
Of course not Aren't Fox News,the Wall Street journal,the New york Post,etc.backing Obama and the Democratic Party? And isn't talk radio (Limbaugh,Savage,etc.) doing the same?
The alternate universe you inhabit must be some place!
@Peter: I think the difference comes down to SO2 and CO2 as well as the timing of the bill. SO2 is involved in health concerns and noticeable environmental effects (acid rain for example) which are easier to show than the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. When the timing of this bill is introduced in a time of economic trouble, bills like these are highly scrutinized (even more than usual).
The CO2 emission debate is one of those highly controversial subjects where the effects are not completely understood or predictable (it's a dynamic subject when in combination with climate change).
Over all, it depends who you ask. Some will say that it will be overly expensive. Non-partisan/independent groups will say it is a relatively small cost.
If you ask me, the bill has been getting watered down and doesn't focus the country in the right direction. This bill is basically affirmative action for energy where the minority is alternative energy.
Peter, SO2 is a harmful pollutant whose elimination is fairly easily accomplished with scrubbers, with a definable cost that can be managed fairly efficiently via a cap-and-trade type scheme.
CO2 is far more pervasive and it is far from clear that we should be spending massive amounts of money trying to mitigate its creation. It is an inert gas, is in very low concentrations in the atmosphere, and has at best a tenuous link to global warming. The scientific evidence of CO2's harm is inceasingly questionable, as it is wholly dependent on computer modeling that has been notoriously inaccurate so far. CO2 is arguably more beneficial than harmful, as it is productively absorbed by the environment.
It is easy to measure SO2 creation and remediation. There is ample evidence that high concentrations of SO2 contribute to acid rain, but not at any cost. Hence, the viability of a trading market. It is also a small, small fraction of the size of a CO2 market, and not as easily gamed as a CO2 market would be.
We live in a CO2 emissions-dependent society, and implementing cap-and-trade for it would necessarily cause net-negative economic consequences for imperceptible benefit.
If it were truly necessary to limit CO2 emissions, cap-and-trade is potentially a decent mechanism, as it has been for SO2. But that is only true if the benefits of reduction exceed the cost and the system is structured to fairly treat all market paricipants.
The evidence is increasingly that it would be wholly ineffective and unnecessary environmentally and extremely costly economically.
Solar energy isn't it?
It's good enough to power the whole fucking universe! We just haven't figured out how to use it yet. Conservatives are just a bunch of nay sayers. Give it time and scale up the technology and the cost will continue to go down. Sometime in the next decade or possibly sooner if OPEC extorts us before then, we are going to hit price parity.
Rudy said...
CO2 is far more pervasive and it is far from clear that we should be spending massive amounts of money trying to mitigate its creation.
"Far from clear" to whom that we should not try to preserve and protect the earth?
Notice I didn't say Gaia. I said 'earth', as in the only planet that we know of right now that can support human life.
Oh, and didn't God tell Adam to 'dress and keep the Earth' (Genesis 2:15), not to rape, pillage and plunder it?
By the way, there are many things in life that are difficult. Does that mean you advise everyone to just skip trying to accomplish the difficult things because they ARE difficult? Maybe education and learning are two of those things that are difficult to some? Should we give them up?
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Mike, you miss the point. You are assuming CO2 is harmful. Contrary to what politicians eager for a big new tax revenue source may say, that is by no means a given, and it is most definitively not settled science.
We absolutely should be good stewards of the earth. That does not mean not using the resources that God gave us, or placing humankind in lower priority just to assuage some people's fears of doom.
And doing something that is difficult badly is far worse than not doing it at all.
Harper, you're right that solar power has high potential for filling more of our energy requirements over time. As has been amply discussed here and elsewhere, it has some severe cost and logistical limitations.
Conservatives, myself included, would be the first to say that they would embrace any new energy technology that is superior to curerent ones. That defines progress. The problem is that solar technology is not yet superior, and has some important barriers limitations to becoming so.
The technology will scale rapidly once buyers and sellers agree that it should be a higher proportion of the total. So, it must hit grid parity naturally. If government tries to force that prematurely, it risks locking buyers into inferior technology, making a greater hurdle for market share gains by improved technology later.
The idea of contrived shortages to force up prices in order to help price parity is short-sighted. and economically harmful.
You also confuse solar as a possible substitute for oil. It is not. It is potentailly a substitute mostly for coal or natural gas for electricity generation. We are already self-sufficient and invulnerable to OPEC for electricity generation.
We should be more self-sufficient also for oil by increasing domestic exploration and production rather than deliberately making ourselves more vulnerable.
My impression of 'Rudy' is someone who thought education and learning was difficult, so he gave up on it.
What was it Danny Quayle said? Oh, now I remember.
"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."
Yes, how true that is.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Well, it didn't take long, Mike, for your usual snark and ridicule to set in. You seem to resort to that whenever you're boxed into a corner and are without coherent arguments. But you did forget to include your usual patter about Lush Rimbaugh and Bill O'Lielly talking points that you're usually reduced to when you're stumped. Very predictible, and oh so lame.
Rudy:
The idea of contrived shortages to force up prices in order to help price parity is short-sighted. and economically harmful
But the idea of pricing in the true costs of use is not short-sighted but economically efficient. And pollution is not priced into carbon use. Consequently, there is a good conservative argument for a carbon tax, or the equivalent through cap and trade, to adjust for the externalities that are not included in the "market" price.
We should be more self-sufficient also for oil by increasing domestic exploration and production rather than deliberately making ourselves more vulnerable.
We would be far less vulnerable if we just used less of the stuff. We are energy hogs, and it's not just because we drive more; it's because of what we drive. It's also a basic conservative principle that you tax something you want less of. If our gas cost the same as in Europe, perhaps we'd drive cars as efficient as theirs. And people wouldn't have to pay any more to drive around than they do now because they'd be getting better mileage.
Same with energy prices. Yes, perhaps legislation would cause them to go up. But people can do a lot to use less, so they don't wind up paying more. And there would be budget savings from not needing the military to protect energy supplies from abroad, more freedom in foreign policy, plus the environmental benefits. That's a lot to plug into a cost-benefit analysis, but it's arguable that it's a net plus in the long run.
The cheapest barrel of oil is the one you never buy in the first place. And there are many, many arguments for intervening in the market to make the price "artificially" higher so that there are incentives to reduce use and promote alternatives.
Free markets aren't inherently beneficial because they're markets. We like markets generally because they usually are pretty good at getting certain results, such as better quality goods at lower prices, which we consider a good thing. But when a lower price promotes social harm (pollution, dependence on foreign sources which create national security problems, etc.), then we need to look at what kind of results we want and determine the best way of getting there. Markets are means, not ends, and so they're not necessarily the solution to every problem. It depends on the problem you're trying to solve.
DSimon, you're right about true costs, at least to the degree that the costs really are true costs, and not just an arbitrary tarriff designed to punish certain players for non-economic purposes. That is the basis for using gasoline taxes to pay for roads, for example. But anything beyond true costs becomes a policy decision, like jacking bridge tolls to subsidize bus ridership.
Extrapolation of additional "costs" into just about anything is way too easy and being largely subjective, is subject to manipulation for political purposes.
For example, lets hypothetically say that people who ride bicycles to work in big cities have a certain incidence of accidents involving pedestrians or vehicles. There are true economic costs associated with that, including physical and property damages, legal and medical bills, public safety officer bills, and costs of creating bike lanes on city streets, including an allocation of the medical and pension costs for the employees doing the work. So, under that scenario, if the true costs of that rider were tallied and fully divided among the bike riders, it would likely be uneconomical for someone to consider riding their bike to work.
The same is true when going through such an exercise for oil, using your example. If we start adding entirely hypothetical costs like carbon emmissions, real economic analysis is thrown out the window.
Moreover, in economics, you must always remember the principle of fungibility, which is where the real danger of this carbon tax chatter lies. In a world economy, costs that US companies have that competing companies do not have are all incremental competitive disadvantages. That is indisputably bad for economic growth.
It's also a two-way street. In addition to looking at the costs that anti-oil people want to look at, the same economic logic requires that the analysis crediting back costs avoided by not taxing, such as incremental unemployment costs or lost tax revenue or profits to the economy. Perhaps the biggest one is avoided cost of war.
As you can see, it can get pretty muddy pretty quickly. Anything other than direct economic cost is subject to huge error and manipulation. There is no way to measure or calculate an appropriate carbon tax.
Similarly, you're forgetting derivative logic in your comment that we should be using less oil. To the degree that you're talking about needless and unproductive waste, I agree. Each individual should be a responsible user of resources, but also should be free to determine his own needs, not be strongarmed by government policy. but, to the degree that less oil use means necessary substitution of more expensive alternatives or unavailability of sufficient quantities to grease the wheels of commerce, that is economically harmful.
To be blithely ignorant of economic consequences for purposes social policy manipulation, which is what this cap and trade bill has clearly done, compounds the vulnerability on the availability of imported oil we need to drive our cars and run our businesses.
Rudy:
But anything beyond true costs becomes a policy decision
As I wrote above, the decision to adhere to free market ideology is itself a policy decision. The question is results, not means. Sometimes markets are the best way to get the results you want. I'd say they're usually the best way. But I'm not willing to say they're always the best way, as recent economic events have shown.
Extrapolation of additional "costs" into just about anything is way too easy and being largely subjective, is subject to manipulation for political purposes.
Or you could say that to leave out such costs entirely, even though we know that they exist and are substantial, is manipulation for political purposes. The Bush administration left out the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan out of the budget because they said they couldn't tell you what they would be. But they sure knew that they would be a lot bigger than zero. To leave the number a zero leaves the economic analysis "thrown out the window" just as much as trying to use guesswork to get an estimate.
Anything other than direct economic cost is subject to huge error and manipulation. There is no way to measure or calculate an appropriate carbon tax.
But that shouldn't excuse us from making our best guesses. Leaving out the numbers just because they're hard to quantify means we won't be getting a result we should have any confidence in. It's like looking for the keys you dropped on the sidewalk at night under the streetlight even though you may not have lost them there; just because that's where you can see doesn't mean that's where it's worth looking.
And if there is "no way to calculate an appropriate carbon tax," then the zero number is just as inappropriate as any other.
Each individual should be a responsible user of resources, but also should be free to determine his own needs, not be strongarmed by government policy.
I'm not saying you can't drive a big car. I'm saying that if you do, you should have to pay more for it because otherwise you're indirectly making me pay for various social ills that I'm not responsible for (e.g. vulnerability to foreign sources and the costs necessary to protect them). Again, it's pricing in externalities. It's not strongarming to have those responsible bear the costs.
To be blithely ignorant of economic consequences for purposes social policy manipulation, which is what this cap and trade bill has clearly done, compounds the vulnerability on the availability of imported oil we need to drive our cars and run our businesses.
The opposite seems to be true to me. We're vulnerable because we drive lousy vehicles. We drive lousy vehicles because the price of gas is too low to matter. When prices went up, people stopped buying such lousy vehicles. If that continued, we'd be less vulnerable. The policy implications seem quite clear to me on this one. It's clear to many conservatives too who would support a higher gas tax if it were offset by lower taxes elsewhere.
Rudey said...
DSimon, you're right about true costs, at least to the degree that the costs really are true costs, and not just an arbitrary tarriff designed to punish certain players for non-economic purposes.
Policy decisions for non-economic purposes can include:
Tax-exempt status to the income of churches;
Tax deduction for home mortgage interest payments;
Decision to not tax non-profits;
Property tax-exemptions to the property owned by churches;
Tax deferral, or forgiveness of taxes (property, state and/or local income, etc.), to lure businesses (from inside or outside the country) to a specific location;
Decision at what rate to tax beer, wine and distilled spirits (and varying rates per quantity of proof);
Decision at what rate to tax tobacco products, with that tax varying depending on whether the product is to be used for cigarettes, pipes, small cigars, large cigars, chewing, snuff or roll your own;
Decision at what rate to tax cigarette papers (rate varies dependent on length) and cigarette tubes (rate varies dependent on length);
Etc., etc.
Tell me the how the above tax decisions are not arbitrary?
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
DSimon, I always appreciate your well-thought-out arguments, even when we disagree, which is often. Beats having to tolerate ham-handed insults in lieu of logic.
Obviously, the crux of our disagreement here is the nature of the policy differences, I don't like blurring the lines between economics and social policy. Each must stand alone on their individual merits.
I think it's erroneous and coercive to manipulate social policy under the guise of economics. I would prefer to see individuals be socially responsible regardless of economic force or coersion, and by their own standards, not those of the legislative class. Similarly, I think it is wrong to explicitly enable the wealthy or politically-connected to Gore-esquely buy themselves out of personal responsibility, and yet demand that the rank-and-file fall in line or be punished economically.
The economics are presently getting short-sheeted in the cap-and trade discussion. For the reasons I outlined earlier, there are distinct downsides to anything that makes energy more expensive, especially for what many believe is vacuous social policy.
We can't afford to get this wrong, in either direction. The numbers are too big. This should and will be a protracted debate, and not a rush-rush job. I believe that the more people understand, the less they'll be inclined to place such a huge burden on the economy.
Leaving CO2 and SO2 emissions aside for a moment...
If, as most conservatives suggest, we should adhere to what the free market tells us, then conservatives should line up lockstep with the "environmental wackos" because the free market has spoken loud and clear about where it stands on climate change issues.
Although many aggresively fund and support intitiatives to expose global warming as a liberal hoax, major oil, gas, and energy companies are not only believers in global warming, they're banking on it. Nearly every major company in the above categories has begun to amass leases in regions that will open up as new ice melts away. Greenland's Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum reports that applications to buy up rights to lease coastline strips for oil exploration have increased fifteen-fold. ConocoPhillips, Shell, ExxonMobil, Devon Energy, and Chevron have collectively invested more than $400 million in exploration licenses for the Alaskan Beaufort Sea area alone.
Other contries, not just American petrol giants practice this as well. Russian energy/gas behemouth Gazprom believe they've found one of the largest offshore gas reservoirs on earth in the Barents Sea and have all the giants falling over themselves to develop the area.
In short, there's a lot of money to be made by global warming profiteering. Is climate change a real phenomena? As Deepthroat said, "follow the money."
If, as most conservatives suggest, we should adhere to what the free market tells us, then conservatives should line up lockstep with the "environmental wackos" because the free market has spoken loud and clear about where it stands on climate change issues.
You're confusing the free market with corporations. Conservatives like myself are for the former and indifferent to the latter. Despite what some would have you believe, true conservatives (NOT necessarily Republicans) are just as much against the government enabling corporate waste as they are against it enabling personal waste. This is why we were so against the $700 billion TARP bill.
Now for the topic at hand: Your post is not evidence for corporate belief in global warming at all. They simply want to drill through the ice to get at the oil. Even offshore wells have to drill through miles of rock to open a working well; it's not a stretch at all to imagine a well that started by drilling through ice.
Scotty, Scotty, Scotty
Your post is not evidence for corporate belief in global warming at all. They simply want to drill through the ice to get at the oil.
Do you really believe that? If so, you have absolutely NO idea how much power moving ice can exert and how much it weighs.
Ice weighs almost 60 pounds per cubic foot. A typical North Atlantic iceberg weighs 100,000 to 200,000 tons, but they can and do get bigger, a LOT bigger.
Also, an iceberg can be trapped in pack ice, and pack ice can crush a ship (and has done so).
There is NO oil rig that would be able to stand up to moving ice. Remember, rock is stable, but ice moves. Remember, it is floating on water.
Try reading this article from 1994 about how Canada had to protect oil drilling rigs off Newfoundland from icebergs:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/26/business/canada-s-high-risk-oil-venture.html
And then do a search for 'Hibernia project', the project described in the above article.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
The thing is Rudy, and I agree to a certain extent that grid parity is the goal, any other technology that gets invented as an alternative to fossil fuels will have just as long a ramp-up as Solar, Wind or whatever. Clean Coal (which is one of the world's worst misnomers) will take another 10 years just to get a reasonable size demonstration plant, plus another 5 for successful demonstration of the storage. That's 2024 before we've even conclusively proven it works. From there the technology is still at the bottom of the exponential growth curve - essentially where solar or wind were in the 70s.
So any technology invented today will likely need 15 years to perfect, then another 20 or 30 to roll out to large scale deployment and commercial viability. Wind and Solar have done that bit, by and large, excepting a few efficiency gains and cost reductions. They are economically viable or will be with a couple of years of market generation - which is what a feed-in tariff does - it stimulates demand for a product so that the growth curve moves faster with more installations, shortening the time to grid parity.
And as for the whole oil/car thing, you can apply a similar logic to battery powered cars, which are at more or less the stage solar is at.
We can't do nothing but wait for the perfect technology, as it'll still take decades to perfect and expand that technology. We have technologies that are ready for deployment in the near future. Like them or hate them, they will be the technologies we rely on.
Tomas, the only reason solar has had such a long development life cycle is that the economics haven't been right. If the economics were compelling, the world would beat a path to the solar door.
A lot of the current improvement in solar technology is because of technology improvements from the semiconductor industry, reducing the raw materials cost and improving efficiency. Those developments naturally take time.
Grid parity for solar really is a false goal, but it is an important milestone. The common definition of grid parity for solar is only so for installations where transportation or storage of power isn't required. So, that will make it mostly suitable for rooftops and adjunct use during daylight hours, not primary use.
The danger of artificially forcing the economics is to stall innovation elsewhere and to subsidize inferior economic performance. That would be just disastrous for the economy, which is a point that is too often missed.
Rudy:
Thanks for your comments. On to your most recent post...
I don't like blurring the lines between economics and social policy.
One of my points is that the "blurring" is inevitable, and perhaps even required. There is no way to separate them out, and trying to do so won't provide an answer that's worth very much.
Do we live our lives to maximize our economic output? We watch TV, we go on vacation, so evidently not. Or is it that these activities have some economic "value" to us which, if we could quantify it, would make our decisions rational and output-maximizing? To me, its semantics. But if these factors are not included, then we're not rational actors. If they are included, then the calculation is fuzzy. So we'll either get a wrong result, or one that has uncertainty. We're not going to get a "correct" answer with just money in, money out.
Here's another example. I think it's arguable that would be more "efficient" to reduce crime if we had video cameras on every corner. But we reject that system. Why? It's because we don't want to live in a police state. So does one conclude that we are irrational, in which case this economic analysis doesn't do much for us? Or do we conclude that there is some fuzzy economic value to liberty that makes our decision rational? Either way, just quantifying what can be quantified and leaving everything else out seem to me to get a number that may be, indeed likely will be, meaningless.
I don't want government setting the price of apples. Better apples at lower prices is, I think a good thing. But that analysis I think doesn't work very well when we're trying to figure out what kind of society we want to live in and how to get there. It's just not the right tool for the job
Similarly, I think it is wrong to explicitly enable the wealthy or politically-connected to Gore-esquely buy themselves out of personal responsibility, and yet demand that the rank-and-file fall in line or be punished economically.
First, the wealthy always have advantages. They can buy themselves better schools, housing, food. But wouldn't having people pay more for profligacy (as you say "buy themselves out of personal responsibility") be better than what we have today where those people are wasteful and don't have to pay for it? And wouldn't those revenues leave the "rank and file" better off by reducing whatever burdens that would otherwise have to be imposed?
And the "rank-and-file" don't have to be "punished" economically. There are plenty of ways to funnel revenues so that most people are not hurt but still have the incentives to make the changes we need to make. For instance, revenues from a gas tax could be used to lower the (regressive) wage tax and/or provide breaks on more efficient cars. That trade-off gives everyone, regardless of income, incentives to drive less and drive better vehicles while cushioning those who may take a while to make the transition to better vehicles.
The numbers are too big. This should and will be a protracted debate, and not a rush-rush job.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "rush-rush" job. A year? Five? Ten? There are many scientists who believe that we're already on the late side, and that doing something badly now would still be better than trying to get it right later.
And I don't think the numbers are that big. Conservation alone could result in huge savings and really wouldn't cost anyone much at all (again, if we just drove better cars...not a big sacrifice, either in lifestyle or money). Weatherizing homes would save energy, pay off in the long run, reduce emissions, and create jobs.
Bush kept saying we'll do something about climate change, but not at the expense of economic growth. But maybe economic growth is not our highest priority. Maybe shaving a small fraction of growth is something most people would be willing to do if it had some chance of preserving the environment. Otherwise, it seems unlikely anything will get done at all. And we'd never go on vacation.
DSimon, I understand your logic, but I think you are buying into the false logic that coersion equals incentives. They are very different. Incentives do not include punishment for failure to respond. Redistribution of punishments and incentives to generate desired behavior is hopelessly politicized and economically inefficient.
You're confusing microeconomic behavior and macroeconomic table-setting. Agreed that people don't and shouldn't run their lives to maximize economics, but that doesn't mean that government should make those choices for us. Nor should it stack the deck such that there really is no choice. For individuals to be backed into a corner on the choices they can make is freedom-killing.
As far as time frame for debate, it certainly shouldn't be like it was with the House bill, with a bill no one had read and only three hours of debate. The right time frame can only be when the debate is winnable based on evidence. The evidence of the need for such an extreme response to a dubious problem is clearly lacking, which is why this is bad legislation.
Sure, there are scientists that think we're on the late side, and there are those who think it is a complete non-issue. Both may even be right. Until someone can show a fact-based case why this extreme coersion is necessary, government should do nothing. Evidence favors the do-nothing argument, so Bush's approach was right. It would be improper to place a higher priority on non-economics without a compelling reason to do so, and that reason is only theoretical, and more than likely false.
In the meantime people will adjust behavior on their own, based on their own choices, responding to what is best for their circumstances. More government coersion only hampers their freedom to make the best choices for themselves.
Rudy,
Some final thoughts.
I see nothing that's been proposed that amounts to "coercion." People remain free to make choices. That some choices come with a price does not make that price coercive. As we have already discussed, choices that come without a price essentially force coercive results on everyone else. I just don't see where government is "making the decisions for us" here, unless one considers the prospect of slightly higher energy prices a decision. And even with that possible result, people can choose to do nothing, or do something to mitigate that outcome. Unless one is a libertarian, willing majorities bring along unwilling minorities all the time, else little would get done.
You say the evidence for prompt action is lacking, that the problem is "dubious," and the proposed response "extreme." I see none of these things. My reading has been that the need to act is pretty urgent, that the possible consequences of inaction are substantial, and the proposed actions are reasonable and not all that costly. But if we're reading the evidence differently, then there's nothing more to discuss on that matter. (Still, how much risk does one want to take on an irreversible catastrophic outcome, even if the probability of that outcome isn't all that certain?)
You say that government "coercion" interferes with individual "freedom to make the best choices for themselves." Putting the "coercion" label aside, I'm sure you are aware that sometimes allowing unfettered freedom results in everyone doing worse. Overfishing is a classic example. In such situations, government regulation is certainly justified even on a purely economic analysis. Again, this generalization that markets are good and government is bad seems to me to be an ideological choice and not one based on getting to particular results. Again, markets are means, not ends. I think we need to consider the ends first and then the best means of achieving those ends. It will usually be the market. But not always.
Addendum to my prior post.
On whether the legislation is "extreme," Paul Krugman says in today's NY Times: "But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low."
One may disagree with Krugman's politics, but I find he doesn't fudge the numbers.
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