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

To: RetiredNow who wrote (8681)	5/29/2009 4:52:34 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 86355

and actions to correct that imbalance are needed I submit that further intervention only distorts the market more. It doesn't correct any imbalance or distortion it just creates new ones. The gov't has already created a situation where oil and coal have enormous advantages. It contributed to those advantages, but much of their advantages have nothing to do with government. Government didn't set physics and chemistry such that gasoline has a greater energy density than batteries. The government didn't put large amounts of oil and coal in the ground. Even without zero government intervention those energy sources still would have had advantages. The government contributed to the build up of infrastructure for using them, but the creation of the infrastructure was to a great extent done by private companies. And even if it had been 100% done by government, and if oil would not now make any sense as an energy source if it had not been for that government investment, your asking to count sunk costs in to the equation for future decisions. The concern is not "What energy source would make the most sense if government had never intervened in the past?" (not that it wouldn't in many cases be fossil fuels even if that was the question). The question is given the current facts on the ground what energy source makes sense. You can eliminate future intervention for one energy source over the other, but the built up infrastructure is an actual existent resource, the same as a huge field of oil, or an intense consistent wind source is. Trying to go back and figure out all the past interventions and then making an equal size intervention in order to somehow be "fair" is foolish. "Fair" is irrelevant. Energy sources aren't people, they don't have rights or emotions, it doesn't matter that they where treated "fairly" in the past. Even if it did matter its probably impossible to accurately weigh up all the benefits and additional costs that the government gave to all sorts of different energy sources.