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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (105146)	2/28/2009 12:55:08 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 542495

The shot over the bow was the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973. At that time, I wondered why the U.S. response was not an emergency program of energy independence akin to the space program. Since nobody runs their house solely by free market economics, why would we run our country that way? To maximize cash flow, should I prostitute the members of my family and say to hell with future generations of "cosmics"? That basically has been the philosophy of the American national energy policy. The low hanging fruit of energy is a) energy conservation and b) alternative energy - both of these are mature technologies that produce huge gains and increase national security better than buying missiles. If it was an imperative and we were to dangle the free-market carrot of tax-free earnings for 5 or 10 years for industries which provably lowered total carbon emissions, we would have had a land rush for energy savings, starting almost immediately with replacement of truck with rail and other more novel logistical approaches. There is a business model where people could lease their roof space to a company that would provide the lease granter with electricity, selling the surplus to the grid, for instance. This industry should get a subsidy similar to the ones oil has been given for over 100 years. When all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That is the root cause for the energy policy we've had created for us by oil men.