Why vote NO on the Texas oil company proposition to delay renewable energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-12-2010

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:

In last week’s post of my effort to add to possible future California Senator Tom Campbell’s energy policy I included that he should come out against the Texas oil company’s proposition to the California policy that is now set to create sharp but still modest increases in how much renewable energy is built in California.

Since this policy will also increase THEIR costs, their clear purpose in sponsoring this is to save their own short term profits by telling California voters to delay both the increase in their costs AND the planned increase in renewable energy here.

This past Monday, 5-10-2010, the San Francisco Chronicle had an article on this issue titled, “Business leaders split on bid to delay AB32.”

The article makes it quite clear that there are two issues involved.

The first issue is the most critical one though the second is a sufficient reason to vote no.

1. One of the business people they interviewed summarized the key issue very well. “….Andy Ball, president of Webcor Builders in San Mateo,” said this: “ “ Our days of Cheap hydrocarbon fuel are ending whether we like it or not. It may be painful now, but every year we wait is going to create more pain downstream.” “

This is the key issue but is NOT put strongly enough! The more pain is a LOT more pain!

The three points this comment leaves out are that:

The amount of pain the current renewable energy plan will cause Californians is modest. (It’s somewhat greater for the oil companies. But it likely will only cut their profits some & will not cause them an actual loss.)

The delay before even more pain sets in if this delay proposition is passed will likely be less than two years in my judgment.

And, the really scary part is that the more pain if we delay is NOT 15 % more costs, it’s likely to become 400% more costs or more and may even cause our economy to collapse.

In California and the United States, we depend almost entirely on gasoline and diesel fuel to transport people to work and to transport everything we buy and eat.

But the world is about to produce LESS of the petroleum these fuels are made from. Worse, the world-wide demand for this oil is rising and the population of the world is rising.

Due to peak oil predicted by well-informed Kuwaiti scientists recently to occur in 2014 combined with population growth and hopefully a world-wide economic recovery, petroleum will both double and redouble in price and begin becoming less and less available.

Do you remember the sudden run up in gasoline prices just before they helped trigger the current recession?

Unless we build a lot more renewable sources of electricity, use more plug-in hybrid and electric cars and make much more biofuels at reasonable cost, in California we will have $10 a gallon gasoline or more within 10 years.

We can have slightly cheaper gasoline and utility bills in the short run but dramatically higher gasoline and utility bills within about five to 10 years.

Or we can have gasoline and utility bills go up 2 to 6 % now but stop going up nearly so much after that depending on how California votes on this issue.

Then after that, California’s economy will just hold together as the world runs out of oil because we have enough renewable energy developed here OR our economy will collapse because we didn’t keep a policy to have it built when we had the chance.

The only economy the Texas oil companies sponsoring this proposition care about is their own.

2. The second point is that keeping California’s renewable energy standards will create jobs here if we keep these standards in place. If we fail to do so, most of these new jobs will not be created here.

The clean energy economy has produced jobs over the last year or two in California even as some of their expected bank funding disappeared and the rest of the economy LOST jobs

It seems to me, as I hope it does to you, that during a recession keeping a policy that creates new California jobs soon and protecting our economy from running out of affordable energy later, is dramatically MORE important than holding down short term gasoline or utility rates just slightly.

California is one of the world centers for innovation in clean and renewable energy. Vote in this proposition and many of these kinds of jobs and the money in this field will go to Germany and China that could have gone here to increase California’s stature in this critically important area.

This will NOT help California’s economy. It will HARM California’s economy instead.

The only economy the Texas oil companies sponsoring this proposition care about is their own.

One of the supporters of this proposition, said that California is losing manufacturing jobs and implies that this will worsen if the proposition is not passed. To put it bluntly, he couldn’t be more wrong.

It will not influence the main causes of this loss in manufacturing jobs. (His belief that it would do so is incorrect in my view.) In fact, it will prevent manufacturing jobs in clean energy companies in California from being created. Worse, since it will help ensure HIGHER gasoline and diesel costs within 5 to 10 years, it will cost all kinds of jobs here including manufacturing jobs in other industries.

3. There is also the third issue. Intentional deception by the Texas oil companies who wrote the proposition.

Some of the supporters say that this is “just” an attempt to cut Californians a short break in having slightly higher costs while we are in a recession.

It’s NOT. Not even close. It’s an attempt by the oil companies sponsoring it to delay a hit to their profits indefinitely -- to forever if they can manage it.

If it really was what these people say it was, it would indeed be a short delay.

The bill would read something like when there was general agreement that the recession has ended in the rest of the country and California’s unemployment rate dropped below 10 % for three consecutive months, the delay would stop.

Read the proposition for yourself. It would take several quarters of an unemployment rate of less than 5.5% to turn off the delay.

The oil companies know that the big run up in oil prices coming soon will likely prevent that from happening in the foreseeable future or maybe ever happening unless we remake our energy economy to not rely on oil.

The only economy the Texas oil companies sponsoring this proposition care about is their own.


Why make the big run-up in oil prices worse to save the Texas oil companies a few bucks of profit?

Why turn off creating renewable energy jobs in California?

Why increase the risk California’s economy will collapse as oil begins to run out?

Why indeed!!

Vote NO on this proposition!