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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (79182)	8/30/2006 10:54:25 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Some of the infrastructure can't be used at all, some of it can be used with modification, some of it can simply and easily be used, but its going to be very expensive. How about hybrid cars running on biodiesel, just as an example? They'd still need to fill up. Now where could we find an infrastructure suited to distributing liquid fuel for automobiles? Gee, that's a toughy. Just think of all those gas station owners not being put out of business. Let's say the government decrees that all cars built and sold in America must be hybrids within five years, and we will subsidize the car companies to effect that transition. Hybrid vehicles are noticeably more expensive (subsidies don't lower the real cost they just pull it from someone else's pocket), and the benefits of hybrid technology are often exaggerated. Hybrid cars typically have design features that increase fuel economy that have nothing to do with the hybrid technology. Such features could be applied to regular cars. A better idea than picking a specific technology (like hybrids) and having the government mandate and subsidize it would be to increase the CAFE requirements and let car companies figure out how to do it themselves. Still better would be to increase the gasoline tax or tax oil, or fossil fuels of any sort and let market forces take it from there, with the long term effect of decreasing usage, but without the specific government mandates. I wouldn't be very likely to support the increase but its a much more efficient solution. As for biodiesel it has its own problems and in any case its not really feasible to scale it up to replace all gasoline use in the next 5 years. But suddenly, thousands upon thousands of workers who've been laid off by Ford, GM, and Chrysler would be put back to work. They'd be making money and paying taxes, instead of being underemployed drags on the economy. Investing trillions in bringing other energy sources online puts those trillions to work right here in our country, and would generate jobs like mad. It's not as if all the money would go up in smoke. Hell, even building nuclear weapons, one of the most wasteful things a nation can do, produces jobs. See bastiat.org By the way, I don't think you can really support your contention that if you transition from one energy source to another, you reduce the total amount of energy that we can use. I also don't see why it's necessary to completely eliminate the use of oil. The contention was based on the assumed requirement that you eliminate all oil use. Change the scenario and you get different results. I wasn't arguing against trying to find and perhaps use other fuel or energy sources. I was arguing against a rapid phase out of oil use. I think it would create an unprecedented economic boom. No, it wouldn't. For the same reason that breaking windows and then hiring people to fix them doesn't create and economic boom. It might increase the official GDP figures but it doesn't really create more wealth. The new "bio-diesel hybrid cars", and new fuel plants just replicate the functionality of the old cars and refineries. You sink a lot of money in to them and you don't get a lot, perhaps not any, real new output from them. Even if the investments have a real net return after considering that factor (something that is far from certain), that return would likely be lower than the same money invested in other, non-politically directed investments.