Jed wrote:
> This is bunk. First, the wind power subsidies are modest > compared to > the tax breaks (depletion allowances and so on) for oil, (snip) While I'm no fan of "Big Oil", I think it's important to point out that the oil depletion allowance has been virtually nil since 1978. > Third, coal is subsidized at > infinitely > higher rates than wind power: it costs at least 20,000 > lives per > year. I'm not sure what figures you're using here. If it's coal mining accidents, the yearly figures for that are trivial, because the number of people it takes to mine coal is a tiny fraction of what it used to be on account of mechanization. If it's black lung disease, everyone should know that this is a smoking related disorder. People who don't smoke don't get it. Ditto brown lung disease and mesothelioma. I'm not touting the glories of coal. I just don't know how you could come up with this number of related deaths. If you mean projected or estimated deaths from coal burning air pollution, that might be true, but people who make such estimates are normally prone to exaggeration. And one thing is never ever included in the "evils" of various energy sources. That is the number of deaths that would occur if the energy were not available or were too expensive. And that is a very large figure indeed. I agree with you about the ethanol. Even now people are dying because world food prices have ramped up quickly from the wasting of corn to make ethanol. M. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
