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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (587)	7/7/2008 1:47:25 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 86355

1) Concerns about foreign sources of energy are reasons to favor producing more conventional energy here - oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear. Agreed. The Fed should allow drilling on public lands, but should not provide incentives to do so. Instead, let the oil companies pay market rate leases. In general, thats exactly what happens now. Leases are competitively bid. The revenue from those leases should be used to encourage diversification of the country's energy sources. I don't know the current use of all lease revenue now, though I know some goes back to the coastal states - TX, LA, MS, AL. We could go at our current pace and we'll get there eventually through market forces, but other countries will own all the patents and wealth creation of the new industries. Or we could incubate it and get there fast with government help, and we'll hold most of the wealth creation engines, just like we did from the Internet. The federal government isn't making anything off the internet, is it? And I can't imagine that the US government, if it were to hold valuable energy patents, would demand kings ransoms (or any ransoms) from other countries. Giving such patents away would be the most environmentally friendly thing to do. I think this line of argument therefore is based on mythical assumptions. ) Its foolish to think the govt can quickly command the construction of a better grid and a brand new electrical storage system (which doesn't exist now and will be based on new technologies) for the cost of the manned moon mission. Go back and read your history books. In particular, focus on the New Deal. What did the New Deal accomplish? You can point at some old buildings here and there that were WPA projects - an old library here, an old post office there. Not very impressive imo. The only achievement I can think of is TVA and the other hydro-electric power projects out west. All these h/b government owned corporations. Maybe that (govt ownership) was necessary - the government can condemn land and flood people out more easily than private hydro companies could, probably. Though I think we don't have that many more rivers we can install hydro projects on. And I know that environmentalists are against damming more rivers as much as they're against new coal and nuke plants. And those government corporation hydro projects like TVA weren't nationwide - they were limited to specific regions like the Tennessee, Columbia, and Colorado rivers. Oh and btw, the technologies exist today. We just aren't using them to the extent that we should. Homes are already off the grid and have installed battery storage systems and they work just fine without losing any of the conveniences of modern life. Yeah, sure. The folks who are getting off the grid now are doing so voluntarily and you seem to think we should do more. Are you proposing to push more people off the grid or something? ) Politicians are likely to make investments based on political considerations, not what is most economical. Command-planned economies don't work as well as those that evolve freely. Agree completely. However, if we deliberately pulled together a working group of academics, industry captains, and government officials, we could do wonders. This is the Silicon Valley model and it has brought more wealth to California over the last few decades than any other part of the country. I didn't know Silicon Valley was government planned. In fact, I don't think it was. I think venture capitalists planned new developments in our high tech industries w/o any govt overlords guiding them. Which government officials were the key planners of Silicon Valley (surely you're not crediting Gore with inventing the internet?)? I am still skeptical. We should cancel the Mars mission Ah, we agree wholeheartedly on something. and replace it with the Alternative Energy mission. Obama plans to invest $150B over 10 years to this type of effort. I've read the venture capitalists are investing in this area. I'd bet on them being more successful than any government program. He can get the money from 1 year's worth of savings from shutting down this ridiculous Iraq war. Assuming he does that. He says he will refine his policy on Iraq. You know as well as I do that the rest of the world follows the US when it comes to major economic shifts. If we were to do what Brazil did and become fully energy independent, we'd be the envy of the world and the rest of the world would be falling all over themselves to buy our technology so they could do the same. Why don't we buy Brazil's technology then, if they are a model of what we should do? (Note: I know that Brazil is going full blast on developing their own offshore oil reserves in addition to their biofuels industry.) The rest of the world would follow us if we were to develop something cheaper than oil, certainly. Frankly, I don't see us doing that though. Hasn't happened yet. I don't think we should assume this is going to happen till it does. Or this: Oil prices would crater and would likely never recover just from the fact of our own diversification. Add to that the rest of the world and the Middle East will go back to being a desert, which is all the relevance it should be given.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (587)	7/7/2008 5:22:14 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

The Fed should allow drilling on public lands, but should not provide incentives to do so. Instead, let the oil companies pay market rate leases. The problem here is determining a market rate. If the government is the only seller and the oil companies are the only buyer, it can be a very illiquid market. If a particular property was known to have oil (rather than the normal situation where you don't know before hand), and suspected to have a lot, than perhaps you an auction could work well. Absent such a situation the bids will probably not be very high. Getting back to an earlier related issue, if the price paid turns out to be low, that isn't any clear sign of a subsidy, because of this difficulty in determining an actual market rate. In fact even determining that the price is "low" can be difficult and/or subjective. Or we could incubate it and get there fast with government help Government experience with incubating alternate energy hasn't been very successful. Alternative energy is coming. We need to be a first mover in the industry. Why? The real wealth often goes to people/groups/companies/organizations other than the first movers. In any case its not like R&D in these areas isn't being done in the US already. Homes are already off the grid and have installed battery storage systems and they work just fine without losing any of the conveniences of modern life. They either are set up to use a lot less electricity, or the cost they pay for the energy storage system would be considered uneconomical by most, or both. "Command-planned economies don't work as well as those that evolve freely." Agree completely. However, if we deliberately pulled together a working group of academics, industry captains, and government officials, we could do wonders. What would these people be doing? You don't want them to implement a command based economy for energy. The other extreme would just be that they talk to each other, well they already do that, and don't need any big government run initiative to do so. and replace it with the Alternative Energy mission. Obama plans to invest $150B over 10 years to this type of effort. So $150 bil. worth of command=planed economic transition? If we were to do what Brazil did and become fully energy independent The biggest part of what they did was more drilling for oil. Money is the root of evil over there. Take away the money and all you have are impotent Mullahs. Give them $500B a year in US cash and you have a deadly enemy, which is what we have right now. The oil money helps and hurts the effort. Iraq's government can certainly use the oil money. Saudi doesn't always use it in ways we like, but one thing they do use it for is to keep the population content enough not to oppose the government. Imagine a Taliban like uprising (and worst case actual government taking over) in Saudi. OTOH there is the fundamentalist Islamic schools funded with the money, and also the money goes to the government of Iran.