Renewables and the US Government

In response to my rant on a few recent Supreme Court decisions, frequent commenter Dan Conine writes:

“… The government we have is the government we deserve. Though you are correct per se from your point of view, I disagree with both counts to some extent. First, the Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the legality of laws written by Congress, etc.. It is now up to Congress to right the wrong of 100 plus years of corporate personhood. Now that an impotent attempt at campaign finance has been shot down, Congress should look deeper into who the constitution is written to protect: individuals from bullies/mobs. They won’t, though, as long as we keep giving more money to corporations every day than we keep for ourselves (savings) or give to the constitutional power (taxes).”

You always amaze me.  You’re 100% right that Congress could do something about this, but won’t — and for the exact reasons you’ve named.  That is why this is such a terrible conundrum — and the reason that I blog; without a grassroots effort to call attention to our broken poltical processes, we’re doomed.  

Dan continues:

Second: The dependence of renewable energy’s future upon federal government intervention shows that renewable energy proponents are not much different than the corporate power proponents: both are trying to make profits through coercion of the government Gun.

“We will be ready for renewable energy when people stop using so much nonrenewable energy. Not before. Until then, local control of rights-of-way is the only way to counteract corporate control of rights-of-way because the corporations own the federal government. When you advocate for federal decisions over local decisions, you are advocating for the biggest corporation to decide your future. You might as well just go to Little Rock and ask Wal-Mart to start selling power grids.”

Here I’m not so sure. 

First, I’m not asking Congress to help renewables — only to level the playing field.  Remove the subsidies, force everyone to pay the full price of the power they’re producing and consuming, and see what happens.  We’ll have renewable energy in about 10 minutes.  Btw, you often mention that you’d like to see less consumption of power overall; this action will achieve that goal in a big way.

Secondly, I point out a matter of political philosophy.  Though I felt different about this as a younger man, I’m currently convinced that we need to impute some moral goodness to government — and make sure that goodness happens.  Without it, we’re really dead — worse than dead, actually; we have a dystopia along the lines of 1984 or Brave New World.  But you’re certainly right in what you said above: we get the government we deserve.