How to get more & cheaper green energy....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-24-2009
The congress of the United States is working to restrict or cap CO2 releases and to begin making the burning of fossil fuels cost more.
As I’ve posted before, it may be economically safer and much more politically viable if the initial version doesn’t actually restrict very much.
(If it once exists, it will be rapidly upgraded and tightened up over time. And it that WILL happen once we have more & cheaper green energy sources and technology to substitute for fossil fuels. Plus even with those restrictions, population growth and resource depletion will increase the costs of fossil fuels also.)
But even in a weak form these new laws will begin to make burning fossil fuels for energy cost more.
Meanwhile new technology and multiple innovations are gradually making green energy cost less.
Once green energy costs less, the switch to it will accelerate very fast.
1. A recent NPR news story says that a think tank in the San Francisco Bay Area in Oakland, California called The Breakthrough Institute is making strong effort to get policy to focus on new technology to solve global warming as an economic opportunity; & to push programs to increase the pace of this and to bring the costs down.
Michael Shellenberger, 37, & Ted Nordhaus, 43, started the Breakthrough Institute 7 years ago.
They point out that the direct polling they’ve done found that this emphasis on inventing and innovating our way to a better economy that runs on green energy is many times more popular with voters and nonvoters alike than setting up more restrictions and costs.
They make a strong case that the best, most effective, and most popular way to solve global warming is “….very simple…. we need to make clean energy cheap worldwide."
People will get enthusiastic; Americans like new inventions an innovations; new companies will be formed; and the successful ones will do the job.
Their polls found that the Americans they polled LIKED the idea of revolutionizing energy technology.
Even better, the founders of this think tank are lobbying to get this focus into our national policy and to dramatically increase government funding to develop unusually effective new energy technology and get it to market and used.
There is NOT a lot more money now to do this. But the focus and energy on expanding green technology and green energy sources and making them begin to cost a good bit less, will engage people better than increasing their energy costs.
Even a little more of this kind of funding might help produce a key breakthrough.
But best of all, this focus will foster huge numbers of small efforts by individuals and companies, MANY of which will have an effect and some of those will also be key breakthroughs.
2. John Doerr was right in his comments a few weeks ago. The United States will get left behind (or already is ) unless we adopt this approach of making a massive effort to create new green technology and build new clean energy sources.
Today, Reuters online news had a story titled. “Asia Challenges the U.S. for Green Tech Supremacy.”
Next August, leaders from Japan, China & South Korea will meet so they can begin to combine their efforts & knowledge to develop & commercialize emerging green energy technologies.
The article points out that Japan has moved ahead of the U.S. in hybrid car technology.
China is making a strong effort to lead in electric cars, solar power & wind power.
The South Korean government is funding $31 billion for research into 27 clean energy technologies, including solar cells made without silicon (which already has more demand than supply), biofuels, and CO2 collection, storage & processing.
The article describes this collaboration is designed to combine Japanese and South Korean technology developments with China's very large manufacturing capacity, domestic market, & currency reserves.
The article also notes that last year Europe put $50 billion into clean energy – while the United States, Canada, & Mexico combined invested $30 billion.
So, if the United States fails to do begin to innovate in green energy technologies and install massive amounts of clean energy source by doing the things we do well, we will be at a very strong economic disadvantage.
The article does note some efforts in the United States noting that part of the $787 billion stimulus will be spent for green energy programs or research including: $2 billion for lithium-ion batteries and hybrid electric systems, $800 million for biofuels, $400 million for vehicle electric technologies & $400 million for geothermal energy & technologies.
We also have put billions of dollars in loans to companies to facilitate the building and sales of electric cars in the United States.
If we also begin to rapidly develop and use feed-in tariffs to support massive building of renewable energy, provide government support for private lending on green energy projects, help utilities charge separately for being connected to their grid and providing the energy in it, and rapidly build the smart grid to connect large scale renewable energy plants to the locations where the energy will be used, we will also accelerate the development and use of new green technology here.
It also might make sense to provide any venture capital firm that now invests in green energy projects access to extra capital for seed start ups in green energy and for expanding those that begin selling effective new green energy technologies. One way to do that might be to use a seed fund from the government and then sell government backed energy bonds to provide about ten or twenty times as much to fund this.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
CO2 sequestration....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-17-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
Clearly, massive additions of renewable energy both at the locations where it will be used and at very large sites from which a new smart grid delivers it where it will be used is the number one priority.
Very close behind is making dramatic increases in the work and value we get out of the energy we use. From heat proofing homes to insulating them to technologies like LED light bulbs to servers that generate far less heat and are cooled by extremely efficient systems, we need both small scale and large scale improvements—thousands of them all at once.
And, for both of these priorities we need to make an international effort similar to what the US did during World War II. Virtually everyone needs to make some extra effort for many years.
(And in some locations, for the same reasons, we may add some nuclear power to deliver to the new smart grid.)
But right now, much of the electricity we depend on is generated by burning coal or natural gas.
If there was some way to store, “sequester”, the CO2 generated by these existing sources while they are still needed, it would be prudent to do so if we can.
Recently, I’ve read that Norway has developed ways to do this & has locations to put the collected CO2 that are believed to be able to prevent it from escaping and which have from 100 to 600 years of capacity at the rate Europe is generating them. And, if I read the article correctly, Norway is already doing it. Even better, it apparently costs little enough to be 100 % funded by their existing carbon tax which is not very high.
For now, while we are still burning far too much fossil fuels, the less CO2 going into our already overloaded air, the better.
There are two problems. One is that very likely some of the CO2 we thought we stored away may gradually escape. And, these storage areas will likely get filled at some point.
So we very much need to do everything we can to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to other energy sources as fast as we can. If we do that well, by the time we’ve used up the storage that for sure doesn’t leak and is relatively inexpensive to use, we can begin to withdraw from burning these fossil fuels.
Then, as oilman J Paul Getty foresaw years ago, fossil fuel deposits will be used for materials like plastics and chemicals instead of energy. And, we will get our energy elsewhere.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-17-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
Clearly, massive additions of renewable energy both at the locations where it will be used and at very large sites from which a new smart grid delivers it where it will be used is the number one priority.
Very close behind is making dramatic increases in the work and value we get out of the energy we use. From heat proofing homes to insulating them to technologies like LED light bulbs to servers that generate far less heat and are cooled by extremely efficient systems, we need both small scale and large scale improvements—thousands of them all at once.
And, for both of these priorities we need to make an international effort similar to what the US did during World War II. Virtually everyone needs to make some extra effort for many years.
(And in some locations, for the same reasons, we may add some nuclear power to deliver to the new smart grid.)
But right now, much of the electricity we depend on is generated by burning coal or natural gas.
If there was some way to store, “sequester”, the CO2 generated by these existing sources while they are still needed, it would be prudent to do so if we can.
Recently, I’ve read that Norway has developed ways to do this & has locations to put the collected CO2 that are believed to be able to prevent it from escaping and which have from 100 to 600 years of capacity at the rate Europe is generating them. And, if I read the article correctly, Norway is already doing it. Even better, it apparently costs little enough to be 100 % funded by their existing carbon tax which is not very high.
For now, while we are still burning far too much fossil fuels, the less CO2 going into our already overloaded air, the better.
There are two problems. One is that very likely some of the CO2 we thought we stored away may gradually escape. And, these storage areas will likely get filled at some point.
So we very much need to do everything we can to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to other energy sources as fast as we can. If we do that well, by the time we’ve used up the storage that for sure doesn’t leak and is relatively inexpensive to use, we can begin to withdraw from burning these fossil fuels.
Then, as oilman J Paul Getty foresaw years ago, fossil fuel deposits will be used for materials like plastics and chemicals instead of energy. And, we will get our energy elsewhere.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Comments on the Republican Energy plan....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-10-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
In today’s online news relating to energy I found an AP story that listed some of the ideas in the new proposals for energy by Republicans that came out earlier today.
Some things in it I liked. Some things in it I felt were mixed review items but which might be used in part to gain their cooperation for a bill with more aggressive methods that would actually get passed and enacted. One thing was clearly harmful; but has a legitimate concern behind it.
1. The thing I liked most is that most of the items are proposed as solutions instead of only listing attacks on other proposals they disliked. We need solutions -- not rejections of other proposals however justified.
2. They said they liked incentives to switch to cleaner energy sources. Since adding clean sources is the most important single part of energy policy since that will enable the rest and incentives DO work, I think incentives should be
encouraged.
It will allow some businesses to make a lot of money. But that also means we will have more renewable energy faster. That’s critical. So, I agree that rewarding those who get the job done makes sense. And we absolutely should do so.
3. The Republican proposal is to build 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years.
This is a point on which a win-win compromise might be built.
First the good news:
More than half the population of the United States lives in the East or Eastern Midwest from Chicago and St Louis on the West to Boston to Miami in the East and it will be a decade or two before we can get power lines built to bring wind energy from the center of the country & solar from the West to those cities. It also WOULD help to provide night time energy, and energy growth for the Eastern part of the country to build more nuclear power plants. That way we need build no more coal burning plants and can use the existing ones less and/or close the most polluting ones sooner.
Nuclear power releases no CO2 whatsoever as well.
The bad news is that by adding the complete security costs to ensure these nuclear plants are extremely terrorist resistant and the costs to build them and manage their waste even half way safely, the 100 plants goal is likely not financially doable. And building the plants is simply not safe or worth doing if these safety features aren’t fully funded.
Second, in the second half of the 20 year time period, power lines connected to renewable energy generation further to the West and improved energy storage will begin to come online.
So, a good compromise might be to agree on a first step of building 25 to 40 nuclear plants in the next 10 years. Then if that goes well and the power lines and renewable energy sources fail to show up, we could add more nuclear plants in the following 10 years. But if we barely can build 20 of the planned nuclear plants safely in the first 10 years and the power lines and renewable energy sources DO come online as expected, we can stop there.
4. They are reported as proposing that a trust fund using royalties from oil and gas be used to build more renewable energy.
This also might be a win-win compromise that could work. Rather than completely reverse the tax incentives the oil and gas industries now have it might smooth the transition to leave some of them in place and then have the oil and gas industries use much of the rest to invest in building renewable energy sites. That would provide them some ownership in the new energy sources and an incentive to develop them that they do not now have.
5. They also propose that we increase drilling and production of oil and gas from offshore and “fast-track” new refinery construction.
This also might be a win-win compromise. Adding new use of oil and gas is a BAD idea for global warming. But if these new sources of oil and gas are used ONLY to replace oil and gas that we now import it would strengthen the United States economically and increase national security. We do have large and untapped resources in the Gulf of Mexico we can tap into.
And, new refineries can be built that preplan to blend biofuels &/or liquid fuels from coal with petroleum as they come online. That will both ease the transition to using mostly biofuels AND give the existing companies an incentive to gradually build that business which will help speed it up.
6. They do NOT set mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or for producing electricity from renewable sources.
Here they revert to saying what NOT to do. But their stated reason makes some sense. We do want to minimize the negative impact on our economy of the energy transition while we are trying to climb out of the severe recession. That part of their idea is sound.
The problem is that NOT setting such mandatory targets will mean we get less done when we cannot afford to make that choice.
The second but grave problem is we cannot make the energy transition or slow global warming enough without global action. And, if we don’t show we are serious by setting mandatory targets, we may lose enough global cooperation to be disastrous.
So, this part of their proposal is simply not acceptable as stated.
However, their concern it is designed to prevent is legitimate.
First, we must remember that if we fail to bring renewable energy online to help contain price increases, the continuing increases in the costs for fossil fuels will derail the economy anyway.
So, to the extent mandatory targets speed up the transition to renewable energy they will HELP the economy.
However, it may make good sense to make thing like cap settings and carbon taxes initially less and increases contingent on actually having the renewable energy in place to switch to.
Then we need to use things like incentives and feed-in tariff utility financing for renewable energy and a full national commitment to build more renewable energy and make our economy much more energy efficient to ensure we have the renewable energy to switch to.
THAT combination will allow us to ratchet up the caps and carbon taxes in time but will also avoid harming the economy overall because we won’t do this until we’ve made it safe for the economy to do.
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-10-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
In today’s online news relating to energy I found an AP story that listed some of the ideas in the new proposals for energy by Republicans that came out earlier today.
Some things in it I liked. Some things in it I felt were mixed review items but which might be used in part to gain their cooperation for a bill with more aggressive methods that would actually get passed and enacted. One thing was clearly harmful; but has a legitimate concern behind it.
1. The thing I liked most is that most of the items are proposed as solutions instead of only listing attacks on other proposals they disliked. We need solutions -- not rejections of other proposals however justified.
2. They said they liked incentives to switch to cleaner energy sources. Since adding clean sources is the most important single part of energy policy since that will enable the rest and incentives DO work, I think incentives should be
encouraged.
It will allow some businesses to make a lot of money. But that also means we will have more renewable energy faster. That’s critical. So, I agree that rewarding those who get the job done makes sense. And we absolutely should do so.
3. The Republican proposal is to build 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years.
This is a point on which a win-win compromise might be built.
First the good news:
More than half the population of the United States lives in the East or Eastern Midwest from Chicago and St Louis on the West to Boston to Miami in the East and it will be a decade or two before we can get power lines built to bring wind energy from the center of the country & solar from the West to those cities. It also WOULD help to provide night time energy, and energy growth for the Eastern part of the country to build more nuclear power plants. That way we need build no more coal burning plants and can use the existing ones less and/or close the most polluting ones sooner.
Nuclear power releases no CO2 whatsoever as well.
The bad news is that by adding the complete security costs to ensure these nuclear plants are extremely terrorist resistant and the costs to build them and manage their waste even half way safely, the 100 plants goal is likely not financially doable. And building the plants is simply not safe or worth doing if these safety features aren’t fully funded.
Second, in the second half of the 20 year time period, power lines connected to renewable energy generation further to the West and improved energy storage will begin to come online.
So, a good compromise might be to agree on a first step of building 25 to 40 nuclear plants in the next 10 years. Then if that goes well and the power lines and renewable energy sources fail to show up, we could add more nuclear plants in the following 10 years. But if we barely can build 20 of the planned nuclear plants safely in the first 10 years and the power lines and renewable energy sources DO come online as expected, we can stop there.
4. They are reported as proposing that a trust fund using royalties from oil and gas be used to build more renewable energy.
This also might be a win-win compromise that could work. Rather than completely reverse the tax incentives the oil and gas industries now have it might smooth the transition to leave some of them in place and then have the oil and gas industries use much of the rest to invest in building renewable energy sites. That would provide them some ownership in the new energy sources and an incentive to develop them that they do not now have.
5. They also propose that we increase drilling and production of oil and gas from offshore and “fast-track” new refinery construction.
This also might be a win-win compromise. Adding new use of oil and gas is a BAD idea for global warming. But if these new sources of oil and gas are used ONLY to replace oil and gas that we now import it would strengthen the United States economically and increase national security. We do have large and untapped resources in the Gulf of Mexico we can tap into.
And, new refineries can be built that preplan to blend biofuels &/or liquid fuels from coal with petroleum as they come online. That will both ease the transition to using mostly biofuels AND give the existing companies an incentive to gradually build that business which will help speed it up.
6. They do NOT set mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or for producing electricity from renewable sources.
Here they revert to saying what NOT to do. But their stated reason makes some sense. We do want to minimize the negative impact on our economy of the energy transition while we are trying to climb out of the severe recession. That part of their idea is sound.
The problem is that NOT setting such mandatory targets will mean we get less done when we cannot afford to make that choice.
The second but grave problem is we cannot make the energy transition or slow global warming enough without global action. And, if we don’t show we are serious by setting mandatory targets, we may lose enough global cooperation to be disastrous.
So, this part of their proposal is simply not acceptable as stated.
However, their concern it is designed to prevent is legitimate.
First, we must remember that if we fail to bring renewable energy online to help contain price increases, the continuing increases in the costs for fossil fuels will derail the economy anyway.
So, to the extent mandatory targets speed up the transition to renewable energy they will HELP the economy.
However, it may make good sense to make thing like cap settings and carbon taxes initially less and increases contingent on actually having the renewable energy in place to switch to.
Then we need to use things like incentives and feed-in tariff utility financing for renewable energy and a full national commitment to build more renewable energy and make our economy much more energy efficient to ensure we have the renewable energy to switch to.
THAT combination will allow us to ratchet up the caps and carbon taxes in time but will also avoid harming the economy overall because we won’t do this until we’ve made it safe for the economy to do.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Henry Waxman is doing the right things....
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-3-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
Cap & Trade laws are one way to do that. They may well be an essential part of making it happen in time.
If the caps are really low and the penalties much more expensive than eliminating the excess CO2 released or paying to help others do so in some way, they will get the job done.
1. But to do that, they have to exist at all and begin soon.
That means that they have to be passed into law sometime. And we need for them to pass in the next few months to have them work in time.
What exercise benefits do you get if you never start exercising?
What health benefits do you get from losing excess fat, if you never give up soft drinks, fast food French fries, and other fattening foods at all & never eat even a bit less in any way whatsoever?
None. Absolutely zero.
2. What happens if you do these things but only do a tiny bit – not enough to really do very much?
That depends.
If you gradually do more and keep track of what results you get and then do even more and keep it up, the benefits can be outstanding and massive – even better than your wildest dreams in fact.
If you simply stop or never do any more than they tiny bit you started with, you’ll likely get no benefits to hardly any.
3. What happens if you stop going to work in order to exercise 8 hours a day and stop eating anything except vitamin pills and water?
You can starve or get admitted to the hospital with exhaustion or get evicted from where you live. Not good outcomes at all.
Your intentions were good but you’ll cause more problems than you intended to solve.
In Henry Waxman’s efforts to pass our first Cap & Trade bill, he made a number of concessions that make it initially weaker than we need it to be to solve the problem of excess CO2 emission; & he specifically allowed some of the companies and industries that release the most CO2 to initially escape it in large part.
So, Bloomberg reported that Waxman was criticized by Greenpeace and other environmental groups who said he conceded too much to such businesses, and they will seek to reverse that in the measure before it goes to the full House for a vote.
Who is correct here?
Is Henry Waxman’s set of concessions the right way to go? Or should the bill be re-written as these environmental groups wish?
It can’t be simpler. If the initial cap and trade bill is as strict as these environmental groups would like, one of two things will happen. It simply won’t pass and will have zero effect; or it will pass and harm our economy in these recessionary times and it will infuriate the companies and communities that have no lead time to adjust to it and it will very likely be revoked or successfully evaded.
That won’t, repeat will NOT, get us where we need to go.
So, the environmental groups are well meaning, but unrealistic people.
They very clearly are wrong.
But that’s not the key issue here. If they knew why Henry Waxman was right, they would be much less worried and active in trying to reverse him. They might even support his efforts!
Here’s why he is totally correct and the environmental groups should support him instead of opposing him.
Once we have a cap & trade system that starts in a way that avoids harming the people and businesses that can prevent that from happening, given what else is going on, we will have a cap and trade system within a few years that is very effective.
Here’s why that is so.
Today, we do not have enough renewable energy built to take over supplying the people and industries electricity to replace coal fired electricity. And in many cases, we don’t yet have the electricity distribution grid to get it from the producers to the people and industries who use it.
We don’t yet have the majority of people driving cars that get over 30 miles a gallon or have many industries produce as much using half the electricity they do now.
But in 2020, we will begin to have these things. At that time, we can make the cap and trade a good deal more restrictive and have more teeth.
Then, about that time, between those cap & trade rules increasing the cost of using coal and oil, and new technologies and economies of scale beginning to make renewable energy cost less, the market itself will begin to favor using renewable sources. And within another 20 years after that, we can make the cap & trade extremely restrictive because we WILL be able to do the job with far less electricity from coal and oil.
But a good bit of that scenario is based on having a cap and trade system at all & having it in place soon.
If the environmental groups succeed in making the cap & trade bill more restrictive now, we may not have one or we may have one that does more harm than good.
So, Henry Waxman is correct. Even more than that, as the Bloomberg article points out, though it did take many stages over several years, Waxman’s efforts to increase the regulation of tobacco have become effective.
I think that given today’s situation, the cap & trade bill as he has it now may well pass. And, once it has done so, it will be made stricter at the times that our economy is able for it be. Further, that will happen more quickly than either the environmental groups or many of the businesses who release CO2 today now imagine it will happen.
The people in the environmental groups should remember this.:
The income tax was initially only a tiny tax on people with truly huge incomes. Now almost everyone pays a much larger percentage of their income than the initial percentage the income tax started with.
That did take a long time to be sure. But not only will the same thing happen if we succeed in passing an initially not very restrictive cap and trade law, for dozens of reasons, the transition will be something like 10 or 20 times faster.
But to recap the key point, we have to have a cap and trade bill, however mild initially, for that to occur.
Three cheers and applause for Henry Waxman!
Today’s post: Wednesday, 6-3-2009
We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.
Cap & Trade laws are one way to do that. They may well be an essential part of making it happen in time.
If the caps are really low and the penalties much more expensive than eliminating the excess CO2 released or paying to help others do so in some way, they will get the job done.
1. But to do that, they have to exist at all and begin soon.
That means that they have to be passed into law sometime. And we need for them to pass in the next few months to have them work in time.
What exercise benefits do you get if you never start exercising?
What health benefits do you get from losing excess fat, if you never give up soft drinks, fast food French fries, and other fattening foods at all & never eat even a bit less in any way whatsoever?
None. Absolutely zero.
2. What happens if you do these things but only do a tiny bit – not enough to really do very much?
That depends.
If you gradually do more and keep track of what results you get and then do even more and keep it up, the benefits can be outstanding and massive – even better than your wildest dreams in fact.
If you simply stop or never do any more than they tiny bit you started with, you’ll likely get no benefits to hardly any.
3. What happens if you stop going to work in order to exercise 8 hours a day and stop eating anything except vitamin pills and water?
You can starve or get admitted to the hospital with exhaustion or get evicted from where you live. Not good outcomes at all.
Your intentions were good but you’ll cause more problems than you intended to solve.
In Henry Waxman’s efforts to pass our first Cap & Trade bill, he made a number of concessions that make it initially weaker than we need it to be to solve the problem of excess CO2 emission; & he specifically allowed some of the companies and industries that release the most CO2 to initially escape it in large part.
So, Bloomberg reported that Waxman was criticized by Greenpeace and other environmental groups who said he conceded too much to such businesses, and they will seek to reverse that in the measure before it goes to the full House for a vote.
Who is correct here?
Is Henry Waxman’s set of concessions the right way to go? Or should the bill be re-written as these environmental groups wish?
It can’t be simpler. If the initial cap and trade bill is as strict as these environmental groups would like, one of two things will happen. It simply won’t pass and will have zero effect; or it will pass and harm our economy in these recessionary times and it will infuriate the companies and communities that have no lead time to adjust to it and it will very likely be revoked or successfully evaded.
That won’t, repeat will NOT, get us where we need to go.
So, the environmental groups are well meaning, but unrealistic people.
They very clearly are wrong.
But that’s not the key issue here. If they knew why Henry Waxman was right, they would be much less worried and active in trying to reverse him. They might even support his efforts!
Here’s why he is totally correct and the environmental groups should support him instead of opposing him.
Once we have a cap & trade system that starts in a way that avoids harming the people and businesses that can prevent that from happening, given what else is going on, we will have a cap and trade system within a few years that is very effective.
Here’s why that is so.
Today, we do not have enough renewable energy built to take over supplying the people and industries electricity to replace coal fired electricity. And in many cases, we don’t yet have the electricity distribution grid to get it from the producers to the people and industries who use it.
We don’t yet have the majority of people driving cars that get over 30 miles a gallon or have many industries produce as much using half the electricity they do now.
But in 2020, we will begin to have these things. At that time, we can make the cap and trade a good deal more restrictive and have more teeth.
Then, about that time, between those cap & trade rules increasing the cost of using coal and oil, and new technologies and economies of scale beginning to make renewable energy cost less, the market itself will begin to favor using renewable sources. And within another 20 years after that, we can make the cap & trade extremely restrictive because we WILL be able to do the job with far less electricity from coal and oil.
But a good bit of that scenario is based on having a cap and trade system at all & having it in place soon.
If the environmental groups succeed in making the cap & trade bill more restrictive now, we may not have one or we may have one that does more harm than good.
So, Henry Waxman is correct. Even more than that, as the Bloomberg article points out, though it did take many stages over several years, Waxman’s efforts to increase the regulation of tobacco have become effective.
I think that given today’s situation, the cap & trade bill as he has it now may well pass. And, once it has done so, it will be made stricter at the times that our economy is able for it be. Further, that will happen more quickly than either the environmental groups or many of the businesses who release CO2 today now imagine it will happen.
The people in the environmental groups should remember this.:
The income tax was initially only a tiny tax on people with truly huge incomes. Now almost everyone pays a much larger percentage of their income than the initial percentage the income tax started with.
That did take a long time to be sure. But not only will the same thing happen if we succeed in passing an initially not very restrictive cap and trade law, for dozens of reasons, the transition will be something like 10 or 20 times faster.
But to recap the key point, we have to have a cap and trade bill, however mild initially, for that to occur.
Three cheers and applause for Henry Waxman!
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