Our economy needs clean energy bills NOT partisan politics....

Today's post: Wednesday, 4-28-2010

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.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

There was a chance that the bill originally sponsored by John Kerry and Lindsey Graham would do some very positive things to advance more clean energy and somewhat reduce pollution causing sources. Virtually no one liked all of it. But it had enough positive things that it had bipartisan support and support from utility companies and some other industry groups.

Now Senator Graham has withdrawn his support.

It seems he finds the narrow partisan bickering about immigration policy more important than supporting the future economy of the United States.

He has indicated that he understands China is making progress in clean energy whether the United States does or not and how important it is for the United States to be competitive with them.

To me, that makes his withdrawing support for the bill he helped form completely irresponsible.

Will his decision that partisan bickering is more important make us competitive in clean energy? No.

Ironically it may help solve the immigration problem by making our economy so bad no immigrants will want to come here!

I had thought that Senator Graham understood things like the likely coming of peak oil in 2014, just four years from now, as predicted by Kuwaiti scientists about 6 weeks ago. (They have their readings on the main supplies of oil in the Middle East -- which gives their prediction considerable credibility as they have inside information.)

It seems I overestimated both his knowledge of the situation and his ethics.

Will dumping the good things his bill would have accomplished postpone peak oil or the horrible damage to our economy if we don’t deal with it delay the arrival of peak oil.

Unfortunately, it will speed it up instead.

I just hope some of the more useful parts of his bill can now be passed separately.