This is a heck of an article. Some comments below.
>With no time to spare, advocates of green energy might want to steal >a page from the Republicans' "free market" playbook. GOP politicians >and their bloviating brethren at right-wing think tanks love to >declare their support for level playing fields and "unfettered >competition," especially when attacking government regulations. But >they conveniently overlook the huge federal subsidies that prop up >King CONG. :-) ... as I've been saying .... >And they miss the crucial fact that, with one important >caveat, renewable energy - particularly wind energy -- is at the >brink of blowing away its CONG competition in pure market terms. There's an additional point that the author could have made here, but didn't, and I haven't seen it made anywhere else either. With respect to calling CONG's bluff on free-market philosophy: The Electric Power Industry has had 100 years of what are, in effect, legalized monopolies put into place. Thus, in order to "de-regulate" or at least examine how to define a more competitive marketplace in the power and energy industries, I think you have to take into account the sheer difficulty of changing the playing fields that involve 100-year-old monopolies. Now, I think it's a challenging and difficult part of political philosophy to try to figure out what seem like intractable questions as to how to define a proper role for a "utility" in a city or municipality, where it is or was inherently hard to provide for competition in certain areas.... like water or power delivery. With 100 years or so of protected monopolies, I think it's to be expected that there will be HUGE problems of supposedly "de-regulating" an industry. In some cases, I'm not sure it's inappropriate to have a "monopoly" in place (if it is a "monopoly"). In other cases, I think it's foolhardy to not take into account that an attempt to establish competition and a level playing field merely amounts to "throwing open the gates of competition", when one of the competitors has had not only 100 years of protected time to build its business, but when they will utilize everything.... including the very *supposed* concepts of free-market-whatevering.... to protect their competitive edge even when it's not based on real competition. >waste. And, while nuclear generators have long been taxed to pay for >the construction of a nuclear waste repository, Congress has been >unwilling to tap deeply into that tax revenue to fund the >construction of a disposal site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Nearly two >thirds of the money allocated for the project last year came from >taxpayers, not the nuclear industry. I didn't know that. I know that some people will chortle, but I like Vegas, and I hope that Yucca doesn't somehow ruin it. At present, I'd not move near to Yucca. I'd move to Vegas (about 90 miles away?), but going forward, I hope that Yucca doesn't pose an environmental hazard to what is a very unique American city. > >By comparison, new satellite mapping techniques have shown that wind >resources in the U.S. are far greater and more widespread than >originally believed. The Great Plains region between the Mississippi >and the Rockies -- the "Saudi Arabia of Wind" -- could generate three >times as much electricity as the US consumes. In 2001, $900 million >worth of wind turbines were installed in Texas alone. Along the Great >Lakes, big new "slow speed" turbines like Bowling Green's are already >profitably turning wind into electricity. I disagree with the idea that the only anticipateable negative enviro consequence of wind energy is bird kills. I'd prefer to be more cautious than that. If you develop any of these technologies (solar, wind, whatever) to the point of providing more than 20 or 30 % of man's power needs, then I think you might see some climate or weather change, or who-knows-what. Best I think that we be careful. Any really huge development of such power projects could have an effect. I've been thinking that if we do develop a large desert solar plant or plants in the American Southwest and-or some large wind harvesting, that in a way it would be like Hoover Dam. You have these vast amounts of energy that have for Eons simply gone about their business but which we would now "corral". Maybe, as with Hoover and other dams, it would not provide for all of our needs, but I think pretty soon you'd get to the point where it would be hard to imagine how we had at one time dismissed out-of-hand the idea of at least trying to harness some of that energy. And maybe, as with Hoover, there would be very significant enviro consequences that would have to be weighed.... not in order to dismiss the project out of hand, but just so we know what the enviro-tradeoff is going in. MM Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511 http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! 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