Posts Tagged by energy policy
Why Energy Policy Doesn’t Contemplate the Future
| January 18, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Frequent commenter “Shivrat” writes:
Great that solar investment is increasing so rapidly, and agreed that many challenges lie ahead, but would you say that a paradigm shift to renewables is inevitable in the long term? After all, something like 80% of oil is produced in 6 countries, and 90% of natural gas reserves lie in 3 countries, right? Given that global energy demand is set to increase by 50% in the next few decades, wouldn’t market forces seem to make it futile for anyone to resist (fossil fuels’) decline in the long term?
This is an excellent question – one that surprisingly few people ask. The basic answer is the short-term focus of most people and entities.
I happened to ask a friend who runs a very successful hedge fund Read More
What the Great Patriots of History Would Say About Our Energy Policy
| November 6, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
It’s the birthday of John Philip Sousa, the “March King,” born in 1854. Best known for his patriotic music, the U.S. Marine Corps Hymn “Semper Fidelis,” and of course “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Sousa loved a rousing live performance, and generally reviled the phonograph, as he believed that it would result in people’s singing less. In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Sousa performed at Willowgrove Park, a wonderful old amusement park that meant a great deal to me as a boy growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs. (Now, of course, it’s a shopping mall.)
I often wonder what the great patriots of history would say about what and whom we’ve become. Of course, I tend to look at the question through the lens of energy. Thus I ponder what Sousa might think about our de facto energy policy, blithely borrowing an incremental billion dollars a day and sending it offshore to buy another ten million or so barrels of oil, empowering our sworn enemies, and ruining our environment.
If Sousa had trouble with the phonograph, I can’t imagine he’d look on this self-destructive energy policy too kindly.
Our Fantastically Poor Energy Policy Means an Unsustainable Future
| November 4, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
States’ Rights as they Affect Energy Policy
| September 21, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Here’s an excerpt of frequent contributor John Robbins’ recent comment on my piece about crises and the abandonment of science.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but a huge part of our problem is simple ‘resistance to change’. The main reason why Palin and Perry may be even more resistant is they represent states with super-abundant fossil fuel resources, is that they do not want change or questions which rock their profit boats. After all, it’s those resource and production profits which allow Texas and Alaska to have no state income tax. Lots of taxes collected on conventional energy, at many levels. Read More
“Corporate Personhood” and Energy Policy
| August 13, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
I try not to comment on political issues that have no direct bearing on clean energy, or sustainability more generally. Having said that, I have indeed taken up the mantle of MoveToAmend.org, in its fight to overturn corporations’ recently granted rights to spend as much as they wish to influence our elections. The tragic US Supreme Court decision granting this right, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, is, in my mind, the single most important, and, in this case, disastrous opinion to come from the High Court in more than 150 years (Dred Scott, 1857).
The relevance of this today is Mitt Romney’s bold admission at the Iowa State Fair that, in his estimation, “corporations are people,” a statement that lies at the very heart of the controversy.
At least Romney had the decency to tell us where he stood. As the MoveToAmend people put it, “He’s taking a lot of flak for it, but we want to thank Mitt for being honest about his true loyalties in a time when so many politicians are trying to hide the truth. Americans deserve to know where candidates stand on the illegitimate doctrine of Corporate Personhood.”
Energy Policy Needs to Come from “Enlightened Government”
| July 29, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
In his farewell address in 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned us:
“You and I, and our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.”
I was only six years old at the time, quite unaware of the insight that Ike had bestowed upon us. Of course, he wasn’t the first. 150 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.”
I bring this up to call your attention to Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly newsletter, in which he writes about the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism as it applies to forming the underpinning of our society. He notes:
Capitalism, despite its magnificent virtues in the short term – above all, its ability to adjust to changing conditions – has several weaknesses that affect this issue.
o It cannot deal with the tragedy of the commons, e.g., overfishing, collective soil erosion, and air contamination.
o The finiteness of natural resources is simply ignored, and pricing is based entirely on short-term supply and demand.
o More generally, because of the use of very high discount rates, modern capitalism attributes no material cost to damage that occurs far into the future. Our grandchildren and the problems they will face because of a warming planet with increasing weather instability and, particularly, with resource shortages, have, to the standard capitalist approach, no material present value.
It is clear that there is a time and place for an enlightened government to step in and regulate market activity such that it does not jeopardize our future.
Enlightened government. Does anybody know where I can get some of that?
We Need to Control Our Destiny in Energy Policy — But Who’s “We”?
| July 17, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
In a recent post I suggested that renewable energy throws a new set of variables into an already complex energy market: intermittencies, transmission issues, suitability for certain kinds of storage, etc. At the end, I asked: Are we intellectually capable — and honest enough — to make all this happen?
In preparing for a talk I’m giving at a conference later this month, I started to think about that. We? Who’s “we”? The citizens of Earth? Am I implying that the seven billion inhabitants of Earth have some collective voice in the matter?
In truth, most of the decisions that this world makes on a day-to-day or year-to-year basis with respect to energy policy fall largely into the hands of a very few billionaires, whose fortunes were made in the energy monopolies, and, though those fortunes seem bound to ebb in the future, will certainly not go down without a considerable fight.
It’s clear that our civilization will, in fact, get to renewable energy – purely because it must. Fossil fuels, starting with oil, will prove too costly in the long run. Supply and demand alone will ensure that the energy stored here over the last hundred million years (and consumed without a thought over the last century) will soon become unacceptably expensive.
But what will happen as we struggle along this supply and demand curve? Will this become, as most of our scientists say, a tough time for a growing population of people and the biosphere that supports it?
It’s clear that there’s more at stake here than the fortunes of a few billionaires. May we make the right decisions. Oops — there I go again.. Who’s “we”?
Jeremy Grantham on Sustainability and Energy Policy
| July 5, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
As I’ve mentioned, I always look forward to Jeremy Grantham’s quarterly newsletter. I admire his fluid and conversational writing style, his common sense, and his viewpoint that, while making lots of money is nice, we should at least consider the idea that we all share a greater responsibility to one another. His piece “Everything You Need To Know About Global Warming In Five Minutes“ is one of only a few documents that I hail as a “must read.”
I hope you’ll take a few minutes and go through this quarter’s report, linked above. If I could sum it up in a sentence, I would say: the party’s over.
The pure, unavoidable mathematics of the world demonstrates clearly that we cannot continue to ignore our consumption of resources and think that our civilization will continue without consequence. There are policy elements – especially vis-à-vis energy – that we need to have in place. But this is news that we don’t want to hear, and thus our leaders feel they need to avoid. Yet the result of inaction will be dire.
The most interesting thing about this, to me, is that we’re talking about the viewpoints of an unapologetic capitalist. If you were reading this from a left-leaning tree-hugger, you may write it off as liberal blathering. But here’s a guy who manages $107 billion on a minute-to-minute basis. I have to think that counts for something.
[The Vector] Nuclear Madness
| June 26, 2011 | Posted by Kathy-Heshelow under Nuclear |
While many in the world are rejecting, stalling or abandoning nuclear power, what about the U.S.? Why should the U.S. consider abandoning nuclear? What are a number of experts saying about the nuclear industry in the U.S., and its future? That it is problematic, contentious and not well thought-out. The Obama Administration proposed $36 billion in Treasury-backed loan guarantees for new reactors, which is controversial in itself on many fronts.
I personally would say there are simply two main reasons to reject or Read More
Subsidies for Oil, Energy Policy, and Climate Change
| March 27, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
I would like to reply to the three very thoughtful comments of 2GreenEnergy reader James Gover, who writes:
1) We can talk about the oil subsidies and toss numbers around, but I have yet to see defensible, detailed comparisons of the magnitude of subsidies to various energy sources. If someone in this group has defensible data, please send me a reference. I do not consider special interest groups that start with the answer to be credible.
Without a doubt, this is a problem – and for several reasons. First, as you suggest, anyone trying to ascertain that number has a reason for doing so which normally carries with it a financial or political interest in the matter and taints the legitimacy of the findings. And we need also to understand that there are over a dozen different kinds of subsidies, some extremely nebulous and debatable by their very nature. As you look down this list, you’ll see what I mean: Read More
