1. “American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant and affordable energy.”

Actually, it was not until the rural electrification efforts of the 1930s – which were financed largely by the government as part of the infrastructure make-work provisions of the New Deal – that electricity became available outside major cities. In many states of the west-southwest, the CCC and Army Corps of Engineers worked in tandem with the rural electrification programs building dams and hydroelectric power plants to supply energy to those rural grids. Most of these RECs were cooperatives, owned by the customers who purchased the power, and governed by boards drawn from those small communities.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: This is Socialism in action.

2. “There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!” + something about destroying the economy.

Actually, as so graphically demonstrated last summer when the price of gasoline was arbitrarily jacked up to nearly $5 a gallon so oil companies and traders could make a literal killing, a reasonably high cost of energy that reflects its serious environmental effects, the expensive wars we are fighting to secure it, etc. leads directly to conservation efforts instigated by the people themselves rather than imposed by the government. Consumption of gasoline suddenly got cut in half as people stopped driving two blocks to the bar or convenient store, car-pooled to work, learned how to walk again, etc. It’s good for people to pay the actual costs.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The economy is already destroyed. Did you not notice? We did. These legs are made for walking. Or riding a bike. A truly reflective cost of gasoline – which other countries have been paying for decades – will spur investment in alternatives that will be more environmentally friendly, will bring much-needed crop price relief to farmers, and will generate jobs as more and more people are out of work with no chance of ever going back to the old ones.

3. “In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.”

Massive unemployment in the energy sector began just weeks after Saint Ronnie the Reagan took the oath of office. He ordered the wells in the booming oil and gas industry in Texas and Oklahoma (where I was at the time) immediately capped. Then he dramatically increased our dependence on imported Middle Eastern oil, no doubt to justify foreign policy adjustments that have led to current illegal oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s under those caps is now “reserve,” as we struggle to use up as much of the ME’s supplies as possible.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: The increased cost of doing things the old way will spur investment in new ways. Those acre-size factories dotting the landscape can install solar panels on their huge roofs to offset their costs. Wind and water storage systems can help provide night supply, but most such factories don’t run at night anyway. That’s jobs in the factories, jobs in support industries (like installation and maintenance), jobs in production, and electricity in the grid. This won’t be done so long as energy is artificially cheap. Real costs will lead to real changes.

4. “Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.”

Again, America’s producing oil and gas fields expanded dramatically during Jimmy Carter’s “energy crisis” and ordered capped the moment Reagan got into office. They’ve been capped ever since. These are wells already drilled, were already producing. In order to increase our dependence on foreign supply so we could use it up and make vassals of those nations later on. Obviously, home-grown energy independence is NOT a Republican value or a “supply-side” tenet.

I live in Appalachia. I was in southeastern Kentucky last weekend and Mountaintop Removal is the absolute ultimate in environmental rape for fewer jobs and more poverty. I’m big into making a law through NC’s legislature that would forbid Duke and others from using coal mined in this way. In Tennessee there are once-beautiful communities still devastated by the massive fly ash spill, and increasing nasty health effects nobody’s attending to. There’s no such thing as “Clean Coal” – those scrubbers have been required by law since the 1970s and are STILL not installed because all coal plants get a waiver!

As for the most expensive and dangerous form of boiling water ever conceived, don’t get me started… I can go on for months. All those “secret” scram failures, failed fuel incidents and big ass dumps that have been going on since the early 1950s have killed and injured generations of Americans and are STILL not being adequately addressed. NO NUCLEAR, and I mean that most sincerely as a one-time health physicist who has seen it up close and ugly. We will NEVER be able to afford it, in any possible way.

Note to Sarah’s Ghost: Name the forum, baby. I’ll bring my real cost-benefit analyses, my technical details, and some very sick survivors. You bring your ignorance, your propaganda and your lies. Then we’ll let the People decide, m’kay?

The way we do energy in this country must change. The change will indeed cause some trade-offs, that’s why the government is going to have to subsidize some things. Like offsets for the poor, low-cost financing to the low end of the middle class (that still own homes) to refit with supplemental power generation capacity and backwards meters, revamping the grid to recover some of the 30% of generation capacity we now lose to inefficiencies of transmission, etc., etc., etc.

Putting it off another decade or two won’t help, as more and more cities find themselves under water and massive population relocation kicks in due to increased global warming. Eventually it’s just time to pay the piper, and now is our time. Go back to Alaska and take care of your kids. They need you, we do not.

“Think about it,” Goodwin laughs. “…a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!”

Thus does Johnathan Goodwin, a 37-year old “who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair,” describe the 2005 H3 Hummer he’s recently hacked into being a tricked-out electric hybrid that runs on waste frying oils from fast food joints.

Fast Company Magazine calls him the “Motorhead Messiah” for taking the hugest gas-guzzlers in America and modifying them to get up to four times their rated gas mileage while burning low-emission biofuels grown on US soil – all the while doubling their horsepower. That’s what is becoming known as “Green and Mean.”

Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables – the nation’s largest producer of biodiesel fuels, says Goodwin is in a league of his own. “Nobody out there is doing experiments like he is.” Particularly no one in Detroit. The big American automakers have been whining for decades that what Goodwin does regularly just because he can is impossible.

Which, lobbyists for the Detroit contingent tell us, is why they’ve fought aggressively against raising fuel efficiency and emissions standards. It hasn’t worked, as labor unrest in the UAW has been brewing and Congress is threatening to raise the fuel efficiency standards for cars by 10 miles per gallon and a dozen states are enacting laws requiring steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Japan has flood the market with vehicles that get up to 40% better gas mileage than any American cars, and Mercedes’ new BlueTec diesel sedans not only deliver better mileage, they produce boosted horsepower as well. What’s wrong with American automakers?

Goodwin says they could do it as well as he can. 90% of the parts he uses in conversions are made by American auto parts manufacturers. He’s got an eighth grade education, didn’t even go to high school. Surely all those multi-degreed engineers and designers in Detroit could figure it out.

Yet to their continuing discredit, American automakers are very slow on the uptake. They pretend to know their market, what people want, and yet consistently ignore it year after year. As the competition beats them to the punch every time, and their bottom line triggers bottom-feeding frenzies.

It is clear that the US has to cure its addiction to the Middle East’s black gold. We cannot grow enough corn on all the farmland in the country to fuel our cars with ethanol. And if we tried that, we’d all starve long before we could save up enough cash to buy one of those cars. GM holds a joint patent with the EPA on a new passenger car diesel engine as efficient as the new Mercedes engine, but has refused for as long as the patent has been held to actually build it and put it in their production line.

While Canada has installed plug-in outlets in its parking lots and parking meters so Canadians can warm their engines enough to start in below-zero temperatures, Detroit complains that it can’t use hydrogen fuels because they have to be pre-heated. Like diesels have to be pre-heated. Heck, they won’t even give us the hybrids Japan could sell here just as fast as they can produce them, if Detroit’s automakers hadn’t lobbied for restrictions in the law that puts strict limits on how many hybrid cars can be produced and sold.

What’s wrong is more than just institutional inertia. If something doesn’t change soon, there will be no US automakers – they’ll all be out of business and smaller, more flexible companies will arise to fill the gaps. Companies more in tune with the customer’s desires for something actually worth the tens of thousands of dollars invested. Something that they can afford to drive from point A to point B, something they’re not ashamed to be seen driving.

Automobile and truck manufacturing is a huge chunk of America’s economic base. Transportation of people and goods dictates all peripheral industries and policies in our economy. It’s the reason we’re at war right now in the Middle East and Western Asia, thus the reason our children are dying on foreign battlefields. All so we can drive our Hummers around town with American flag stickers on the bumpers and yellow ribbons on the windows, without feeling guilty for being the greediest, meanest, most arrogant conspicuous consumers the world has ever seen.

It may be time to think up some new ideas. Goodwin’s way ahead on that.

Links:

Fast Company: Motorhead Messiah

Doing what Detroit says is impossible