From Guest Blogger Richard Marks: Where Does Alternative Energy Stand Politically?
As a company developing an electric vehicle, we are seeing the investment community frozen solid. When Obama got elected everyone thought he would solve all of our problems, including health care, Global Warning through a cap and trade bill, education, and taking care of the under-privileged at the expense of the rich. The cap and trade looked to be sure bet and a lot of investors jumped into alternative energy regardless of whether it made economic sense or not. While without economic sense, alternative energy is more expensive than status-quo and thus it is losing favor, orders are being cancelled and many small and large companies are failing. Investors are scared. The August primaries around the country has told us, people are upset and do not like what is happening in Washington DC. I voted in the primary against any incumbent running for reelection. I was not the only one! We are upset with what is happening. What bunch of idiots would write a 2,500 page Health Care bill and half of Congress did not even read!
But let’s get back to alternative energy. Investors are waiting for November and if the Democrats take a hit, then the investors will wait another 2 years to see what the new administration will do. Everything could come to a standstill. What we lack and need is a National Energy Policy to break our addiction to wasting energy because it is so cheap. How do you break drug addictions, there is no easy way, but the American public needs to know that they must change their habits. Never easy. Like cigarettes, we taxed the hell out of them to discourage there use. It works but really pisses off the smokers. But again it is not only their choice because we pay for them in our health care premiums when they get sick. Let them smoke but let them pay for all of the health care problems associated with smoking. Do that and they will really be pissed.
Here is my proposal. I call it the JEDI Fund, Justified Energy Development Initiative or An Energy Policy for American Independence
We like to believe we are intelligent and naturally do the right things, but we aren’t. We are basically economically driven. Changing costs is what we must do to change our habits.
The Justified Energy Development Initiative (JEDI) fund is a “mandatory contribution” when purchasing gasoline or diesel fuel or carbon based electricity. The JEDI fund is about accelerating energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies and will cause Americans to make “better” decisions about energy.
The JEDI fund will be used to develop alternative energy sources – 35%, support mass transit systems – 20%, improve highways and railroad infrastructure – 10%, help those caught in this cost shift – 25% going to 0, and redevelop urban areas – 10% going to 35%. We need a major kick in the pocketbook.
The mandatory contribution would be a $1.50/gal and rise $0.50/yr over 7 years. This sets a long term program and everybody can see it. Researchers can get serious, car makers can plan their products and the public can start to plan their lives. It will be a Federal contribution with Secretaries of Energy, Transportation and Interior being responsible to administer.
We consumed 140,416,000,000 gallons of gasoline in 2005 (1.25 gallons per day for every man, woman and child)! Currently the Federal tax is $0.18/gal yielding $26 B in revenues. http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil.html At $1.50/gal tax, we collect $211B dollars. The American people will accept this, only if they see it going to create energy independence and a better world. I am not a politician, so I can’t “sell” this; politicians are spin masters. Lastly, to keep control (the bureaucrat’s hands off) of the money, we must strictly allocate the tax with public oversight. The public must see progress.
Talk about this! It is about getting fit and healthy; never easy, but we all know it is right.
The energy problem is not just oil we use in our cars, but also includes electricity generation. There are alternatives to coal generated electricity, but they all cost more or require new investments with questionable returns. To drive Americans to use alternative forms of electricity generation, then we must also change the economics to make alternatives and conservation a priority. I would propose a similar initiative to change the rate structure for electricity produced from coal to make alternative forms more cost effective and desirable. Again the money collected could be fed into new technology and infrastructure to build a sustainable energy market. People would all of a sudden realize they must conserve because it affects their pocket book. Cap and Trade is just a political way to hide the tax. It will only make people angry at the energy providers; it not directly tax the individuals and make them responsible. It is stupid and is a corrupt way to deal with a striaght fordward problem.
Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. Are we really insane in this country?
Those are truly excellent ideas, Richard – especially your inclusion of provisions for strict allocation and oversight policies.
However, there’s a necessary step before anything so rational and well considered can come to fruition – get the foxes out of the position of guarding the bloody remains in the henhouse.
As you have likely guessed, I’m talking about bribery – the legalized variety – known by its deceptively polite euphemism, “lobbying”.
Last year shattered all previous records for capital flooding our nation’s capitol – just shy of three and a half billion dollars. That’s about six and a half million dollars per representative (doled out by an army of over 11,000 henchmen – that’s about 20 henchmen per rep), and this year is on a pace to exceed that insanity. With the soaring expense of campaigns and the attendant airtime, who’s really being represented today? Not the people on Main Street… on the contrary, “fictitious persons” quite effectively command the greatest degree of respect from our public servants. In candid moments, our best congresspersons regularly confess that fact.
Of course, the only real difference between the red and the blue on this issue is that the blue call it “a necessary evil” and the red call it “free speech”. With the recent SCOTUS travesty, soul-less corporate mouths may now scream into bullhorns while the average flesh and blood family may merely whisper into a pillow.
Now, I’m all for turning a profit, but only by making, buying and selling quality at a fair price – that’s the merchant ethic upon which our great nation was founded – not that of extracting largess by trading extortively on the necessities of the citizenry, externalizing the lethal downsides and sprinting or slithering away from ethical responsibilities.
The founders of this nation understood the bitter failings of the rampant corporate mind, and understood them quite well. They restricted chartered entities to a discrete lifespan and a single purpose, demanded they continually provide a legitimate and tangible public good, prevented them from acquiring each other, and utterly prohibited them from engaging in political activities. Our wise founders were as distrustful of corporate power as they were of church influence and standing armies.
Sadly, cash now reigns as king in our fair land, and has proved a cruel despot. We need desperately to get the corporate beasts caged as they once were, and select our public servants by their wit, wisdom and honor, instead of their championship groveling and glad-handing ability. Until we do that, we’re locked into a dizzy spiral that ends very poorly for all life on this precious gem of a planet.
If thoroughly regulated and supervised, a healthy, human scale merchant ethic will facilitate a healthy market economy in a democratic society, and will aid that society’s general prosperity. However, unbridled capitalism has shown itself to be lethal to a healthy market economy, and – as it operates according to predatory principles – the goals of equality, unity, and universal cooperation for universal benefit are all intrinsically foreign to it. It may be fairly demonstrated that capitalism and a democratic republic are diametrically opposed in both method and motive.
What are my suggestions? Here are a few I’d make, given the chance:
It seems to me that in the final analysis, a global democratic body is desperately needed – something similar to the United Nations and the International Court, but with teeth – all of whose members, as well as all the executives and legislators of each member nation’s government, are each elected by popular referendum, and tightly held by contract law to work and vote to achieve their platforms. All individuals in member nations must be guaranteed representation, suffrage, and the liberties enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (a document that was conceived and authored in our great country, and ratified by 148 nations, but not by our own senate). Oh, and no hackable electronics – canefield paper ballots only!
These elections must all be of universal suffrage, and must achieve a three-fifths mandate by instant runoff. Voting rights must not be denied to any mentally competent, adult person for any reason. Elections must follow lengthy and vigorous mandatory open debates between all the candidates, fueled by randomized and unrestricted questions from all interested members of the public. These debates must be structured to facilitate thorough public inquiry in solely publicly funded and open forums. Equal airtime and print space must be provided about all candidates in the coverage of their history and qualifications, and that media must be made to be equally available and equally utilized for their mandatory, personal deliverance of their platforms and messages.
All gifts and campaign contributions to candidates or officials from private individuals or corporations must be punishable as bribery (and bribery must not be judged to be synonymous with free speech).
The entire revenue of a separate flat and universal income tax must equally and wholly fund all campaigns for public office. To illustrate the viability of this notion, a study by a major U. S. accounting firm added up the cost of all the elections of all the public officials everywhere in the United States, from local representative to President, in a national election year a decade or so ago. They divided the total by the country’s population. It would have cost each one of us less than a penny a day, to buy all the elections in the country for that year. I think I’d gladly pay a dollar a day.
All other income tax must be flat and universal above the poverty line – and a complete and detailed accounting of it’s expenditure must be made public quarterly. All forms of the income of individuals living above the level of poverty, and all forms of the revenue of all corporations, must be taxed an equal percentage of every dollar.
The only income exempted from taxation must be that amount deposited annually into savings accounts by individuals, up to a balance limit of ten times the annual individual poverty level, and held for a period not less than five years from each deposit. This will serve to increase and stabilize the national saving rates as well – the best source of investment capital. (The U.S national savings rate for individuals has long been below three percent, while individuals in Japan and Germany regularly save an average of between 15% and 25% of their income.)
International speculation in currency must be prohibited, or rendered irrelevant by a single global currency. National and international legislation must be enacted and enforced to cap the hoarding of money, capital, and market control. International standards for environmental and occupational safety, and for labor compensation, must be enacted and strictly enforced.
Corporations must be scrupulously regulated – and the owners, executives, and controlling shareholders must be held accountable worldwide by the threat of long-term incarceration and severe financial penalties for any malfeasance. They must be required to limit and internalize all of their costs of production, and to provide a sustainable, legitimate, and tangible net contribution to the national economies in which they operate. Greed must be shackled, harnessed, and directed, before it will work for the greater good of nations.
Additionally, Government, Justice, and Medicine must be restored again as public institutions – not private industries, as they now so increasingly behave, and are regarded. They must be de-privatized, and disconnected from the motive of profit by restricting the compensation of government officials, lawyers and physicians to a level neither low enough to discourage talented people from membership, nor so high as to serve as a chief motivation. Public and Higher Education, and Law Enforcement must be similarly reformed and generously supported, to restore the quality, the quantity, and equal availability of those services for which each of these institutions have been mandated and funded.
All these notions must not be dismissed as the result of sentimentality, or naive idealism – they are the product of cold logic, supported by long and cruel history, and the increasing precariousness of our own present and recent experience.
In spite of our wavering and waffling Republican and Democratic traditions, it may now be said that there are only two political parties – the Populist camp and the Corporate camp. Yet the path we must tread is that of fierce vigilance and free communication, and the bright horizon to which we again set our eyes must be the universal freedom and right for all to live in dignity and prosperity.
I have come to believe that the prosperity and stability that we who live here in the U. S. often ascribe to the 1950’s, and the social consciousness to which we aspired as a nation in the 1960’s, can both be achieved – for all the people in the developing nations of the world, for ourselves, and for future generations.
The increasingly apparent alternative is the perpetual indentured servitude of the entire human species to an elitist, autocratic, and monopolist collective whose ultimate endeavor is to blindly exploit and deplete the people and resources of our world in order to increase the opulence of a few.
Our choices: dignity or slavery, liberty or death. It has often been so. Many civilizations have perished through blind and cruel devotion to monumental waste. If we fail, we may not be merely the next… we may be the last.
Cameron,
This is really a deep and complex solution. Like my ideas, they are too logical. I believe that the problem is easist solved with term limits. Today policticans start running for re-election the day they are elected. This makes them subject to lobbyist influence. Your numbers are staggering. I think with strict term limits we will find a greater number of normal people wanting to volunteer for a short time to service their country as a previlage, not a permanent position. It will do another thing and that is to bring a better cross-section of America into political office. Not a bunch of politicians who could not make it as lawyers. I have no problems with legal minds other than they have had no training in long term vision or logic. They really do not care about what is legal or not, only how they can use the system to get their clients off or be able to hide behind the law in their own offices.
We need businessmen, doctors, scientists, teachers, farmers and a few lawyers to represent us. They do not stand a chance with our corrupt political system. Term limits makes it a non permanent job. A job where they come in knowing that they are there to solve problems and not get relected. They can look into the future and see the need for actions that are not going to make everyone happy.
We need a National Energy Policy that stresses the following objectives:
a) Reduce dependency on foreign oil by using less
b) Reduce impact on our environment caused by burning fossil fuels
c) Encourage use of alternative forms of energy in the transportation sector
d) Keep America growing and secure
This is too logical for politicians and will probably not let them get relected, but it is for our own good.
What is the real cost to buy a gallon of gasoline? What will the cost be to fight another war over oil. When we get to almost 100% dependent, what will it cost to survive? What is the cost to our air quality in our cities and all the people who are hurt by the polution. Most politicans don’t care, most are lawyers and they just want to sue someone if things aren’t right or pass another law. This takes guts and dedication, all of which are missing today.
Thanks very much for your response, Richard – I find your sentiments and perspective quite valuable.
I think term limits are a good leash on career politicians, but I think they should be structured to allow an override by 75% vote of the constituancy, if someone of exceedingly rare caliber and character gets in and does good work.
However, the unfortunate thing about term limits is they don’t prevent the bribery, and the all-too-common prior vetting of potential candidates by ‘powers that be’.
The lust for money and the influence it buys must be dealt with effectively and conclusively, and – sadly – term limits will likely just mean that we get new crops of gold-diggers every cycle.
Your point about the need (desperate need) for a national energy strategy is very well taken – indeed, the last eight presidents have spoke publicly about that need – but the reality has never come close to materializing (we all, no doubt, recall the secret meetings the last administration had with oil execs before it’s ‘energy policy’ was formulated).
The major barriers to progress on every front of vital concern for the future are the baneful effects of the money in the political system.
I’m grateful for the existence of website’s like Craig’s where these subjects can be detailed, and discussed openly – unfiltered by monopolist collectives aligned with our nation’s current path. It’s open communication like this that will help our citizenry forge and light a path to a better future than the one now before us. I just hope the net remains open and neutral to facilitate that crucial process.
I think, since there is a lack of will on federal leadership, that we need to also be careful about the operatives we use to get the general population to buy-in to the next generation of energy resources.
I would like to challenge you, and the establishment to stop using the operative ‘alternative’ in your articles/posts and start using ‘renewable’ more prominently when referring to the next generation of energy resources.
In using ‘alternative’ therein lies an implication that the masses have a choice. I think all scientists, engineers, politicians and journalists need to send a clear message that renewable energy is the ONLY solution–the sooner this idea is embedded, I think the sooner it will resonate with those who are solicitous about making the transition, garnering more support from populous so the transition can ensue. I mean, it’s invariable, at some date in the future, where the operative renewable energy will be commonplace and the norm–so why not make the transition now?
BTW: A number of local and state politicos I have dialogued with over the past couple of years actually have agreed with my point, and have been embracing and invoking my idea.
Kimberly: For what it’s worth, I agree 100%.
Kimberly,
I certainly understand your concern, but I think we are splitting hairs. I think the best word is sustainable. Cutting down all of our trees, buring them and regrowing them is renewable, isn’t it? But I don’t think this is what we want. Does not renewable energy forms come in different alternatives. There is no one solution to the World’s energy needs there are many possible alternatives. Whether we talk about alternatives or renewable alternatives, what we want is something that is sustainable into the future. People talk about bio fuels as renewable, but they still are burned and generate emissions and CO2. Is this what you want in renewables? Maybe the word “clean sustainable energy tech” is a better choice.
Point about the operative ‘sustainability’ well-taken, Richard. I think, however, I we do indeed need to do a better job defining and framing what is in fact renewable. When energy policy in the EU is discussed, renewable energy and energy efficiency falls under the auspice of energy conservation.
So, I will stand firm on my assertion, that the operative to replace alternative should still be renewable as far as energy goes. Renewable energy is a component that is a constituent of sustainability development–I do not think they are one in the same.
I think if we were able to decouple between environmental pressures and economic growth, we could get somewhere on the topic raised in the OP. To do this, we need to:
1. Use resources with more economic efficient technology.
2. Change consumption patterns.
3. Invoke conservation of resource usage by the most cost-effective means available.
But I think to do this, especially where No. 2 above is concerned, we:
1. Need to make it ‘sexy’, something consumers want e.g. market REs like an iPod.
2. Be careful and more mindful of the key operatives we use to tout the options.
I also think that ‘alternative’ often allows the unfortunate inclusion of nuclear power, about which claims are made that it’s “clean” – even though I’ve read that, cradle to grave, a nuke plant puts out fully three-quarters of the carbon of a conventional plant. Likewise, corn ethanol and other such conundrums are considered ‘alternative’, even though many such ‘alternative’ fuels actually have fossil sources in their throughput.
Conversely, ‘renewable’ engenders and emphasizes a quality of cylic of neverending (practically) in resources like the sun, wind and rivers.