a requiem in pictures
I'm guessing if this was more publicized we'd be seeing the impending demise of the coal industry. "Clean coal" my ass. My impression on coal has been that we should only use it if we can clean it and if we don't have other options available. I don't hold that because of China and it's wondrous air quality (because we already regulate air quality through various cap-trade systems on industrial pollutants and other means). I don't even hold that because of fears on global warming. I just don't see the point in pollution for pollution's sake. If we have means to reduce energy production's byproducts through other means, we should be using them. I've even proposed using Pigovian taxes on coal to either externalize the cost of cleaning it up (or conversely, the cost it imposes on people living nearby), or force the cleaning before hand and largely to bring the cost of producing energy through coal burning in line with its actual social cost. I think people would bitch more if it cost more.
On the flip side, I think people would be more willing to reduce energy consumption if reduced energy consumption rates were what we subsidized instead of energy production and development. ANY energy subsidy, even if explicitly spent for wind or natural gas, is effectively subsidizing coal and oil still. It does nothing to break our dependency because our dependency is based on the massive quantity of energy (and implied energy waste) involved with our industrial society, not on the actual production of oil, gasoline, or coal. We should be subsidizing energy efficiency (which sometimes imposes excessively high initial costs) on the part of end users before we give anything for energy production. The assumption has seemed to be that the American public wants innovation (someone else doing something) instead of conservation (us making changes ourselves). I am quite sure we need both. And I'm tired of policies that presume Americans are either too stupid or lazy to do something for themselves. Continuing to subsidize stupidity obviously doesn't help us in the long run.
10 January 2009
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3 comments:
That's news to me; I hadn't heard about the coal ash spill. What else was so important during that timeframe? Xmas sales reports? I liked the point you made at the end. Getting us to make changes in our daily lives is where it's going to be difficult. No one ever seems to take seriously reducing energy use. Why, that'd be just senseless, and reeks too much of communism, or something.
There's elements of central planning involved, but really all it takes is putting the subsidy in the right place for an appropriate economic response en masse. We already saw over the summer people panicking over higher oil/gasoline prices and doing things like move out of the exurbs, trade in their gas guzzling vehicles, or find ways to trim their home energy costs. Businesses did this too, even before a general economic downturn further necessitated trimming costs (and energy usage bills are one of the quickest places to save a buck or two).
I don't see how it would be impossible to see similar moves if we put the onus on the public to make some changes (voluntarily) themselves to take up greater advantages of an efficient use of resources.
Also...under actual communism, the reverse is generally true as far as "reducing energy use". There are all sorts of stories from Soviets who would have windows open in winter because the building's heat was cranked too far up (and wasn't under their control). Which means they waste even more energy than they do already from a centrally controlled heat source. I had this problem at a former apartment complex where their response was to tell me to leave the AC on during the winter (they were paying the electric bill). It was obviously stupid for them to subsidize deliberate waste.
So yeah, it would be nice if at least a few people could separate logically environmentalism and communism once in a while.
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