steve,
I won't ask what "dis-incentives" are. It's obvious people are still dying from cigarettes; if coal is so bad, then ban it completely after the nuclear plants come online that you are starting to build today. No wait, none are being built today...
Well, taxes. There are taxes on bunch of things. I would make taxes on fossil fuels progressively higher, starting from very low levels to have minimum disruption. That way, there would be less incentive (or no incentive at all) to build coal, natural gas or oil plants, and incentive to build nuclear and solar instead.
I am not for net increase in taxes. Any revenue raised could be used to lower other taxes - such as income or corporate taxes.
Comparison with cigarettes, the utilities are a little more rational.
As far as no nuclear plants being built, a number of them is in starting stages after pres. Bush revived the industry from near death. It takes years to plan, get approval and build them. Which is why I think it will take some 20 years or more to get a crossover, where fossil fuels become less than 50% of power generation.
In the meantime, we have to drill, to keep price of oil reasomable, to prevent catastrophic disruption of the economy.
Tell you what, when nuke plants start becoming operational, then we'll start shutting down coal plants. To shut down coal plants and punish them for being the best thing we have today with no alternative is wrong.
I don't see any reason for shutting down coal plants during their operational life cycle. I would just viability bar much higher for building new coal plants, so that the decisions would more likely end up not to build new coal plants rather than to build new ones.
It's so screwed up in Arkansas, the Sierra club has everyone shutdown here when they tried to build a coal plant in the middle of nowhere, and I do literally mean in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas.
I guess folks like Sierra club can go overboard. If more power is needed now, it may have to be coal plant, because they are much quicker to build. But I think we need an order of magnitude increase in nuke plants compared to what is now in planning stages.
But many investors have a wait and see attitude. I would too if I looked at the likely future president (Obama) and his nutty energy policy (hopefully, it is only version 1 - primary version). But, IMO, if McCain is elected, the floodgates will open. As far as support for nuclear energy, McCain is for real.
Joe |
