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Finding a Way
Problem: Unreasonable greenies have convinced the socialist propeller-heads in your government to render illegal your trillion-dollar century-old energy infrastructure in a decade to "prevent global warming."
Ultimate objective: force the capitalist pigs to beggar themselves trying to switch from cheap fossil fuels to expensive and impractical "renewable" energy sources, thereby forcing the social revolution predicted by their betters for some 150 years.
Actual solution: upgrade the energy source:
The latest advocates [of "zero-emission" power plants that burn coal or gas but release no carbon dioxide] are former fans of renewable energy at the European Union, who say the strategy will be "essential" if the EU is to meet targets for limiting the emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. This month, at a conference in Brussels, Europe's new commissioner for energy, Andris Piebalgs, said the EU could cut CO2 emissions while continuing to burn its native coal and lignite. And still stay economically competitive.
Will it work? If Kyoto holds, it almost certainly will... the imperatives in that treaty pretty much require success. The amusing thing to see is if the greenies and their socialist brethren let it work. Any close reading of a green manifesto will reveal their objective is not a clean environment, but rather the radical dislocation of western capitalism by attacking its infrastructure in an attempt to foment a classic proletariat revolution.
The beauty of capitalism is its successful ability to innovate around virtually any obstacle, when it is allowed to do so. If nothing else the success of such an initiative should provide a nice filter to separate those who simply care about a clean environment from those who care about the intellectual purity of that environment. The trick now is to make sure the latter don't lock the former out of government policy-making.
Of course, none of it makes any difference over here, since we managed not to sign the blasted thing. I think it would be excellent if Europe mangles its heavy industry for a generation developing cleaner fuels while we cheer from the sidelines and then buy their technology when it's completely de-bugged. It'd be a nice payback for, and an ironic reversal of, the 1970s.
Sweet - anytime we can let someone else pay the piper while we reap the benefits is fine by me...
Posted by: ronaprhys on May 3, 2005 08:39 AMcoal plants wear out every 35 years, nukes wear out in 35-40. Hydro dams can last 100 years if they dont silt up. As the aging infrastructure falls apart it should be replaced with solar and wind power systems. All the money being spent on sequestering CO2 should be spent instead on these infinite and clean sources of energy. When we no longer need a garrison state in Iraq to secure OPEC'S oil it will release 200 billion dollars a year we can then spend on these new free energy projects, and experience no new drain on the economy at all, all the while creating millions of new good paying jobs in the process. Fossil fuels are obsolete, and are only surviving because big oil coal and nukes have a monopoly on energy. If you were really a capitalist you would advocate an end to subsidies for big energy ---including free invasions by the US army whenever needed---and encourage competition from domestic consumer owned clean energy sources.
Posted by: bobo on May 8, 2005 10:35 PMProblem is, neither wind nor solar energy can compete with oil. They are not infinite, free, or even practical. They lost the competition long ago, and the only way they can ever even reach an equal footing is when the "aging" infrastructure is crippled through laws that are designed to prevent, rather than encourage, competition.