Why do the Koch brothers oppose renewable energy? The simple answer is that they would not make a profit on renewable energy. Main-stream economists think differently. For an example, Paul Krugman asserted: it has already become a fact that falling cost of electricity generation using wind power and solar power put the cost of renewable energy into range where it's competitive with fossil fuels. storage technology.and the issue paying consumers to cut energy use during peak periods seem to be of diminishing significance. Financial incentives will do the trick to shift from fossil fuels to renewables, a shift to sun and wind instead of fire.
If so, then why global coal-oil-gas or C.O.G operations account for 90% of the energy production and the renewables for only 10% of which 8.4% comes from the hydroelectric power and solar and wind account for the rest 1.6%? The fact is financial incentives, short of direct state subsidies, are no match for the maximization of profits of capital. Carbon-based energy sources are the most profitable ones hence no any other source can take their places when within the bounds of the capitalist system. Profits come from the labor power that mines, transports, maintains and burns coal, oil and gas, which are plenty and cheap; while solar, wind and hydraulic operations, once built, can last very long time and are in little, if any, need for living labor power, hence much less profitable than the C.O.G operations. The renewables are energy-conversion machineries using natural sources as fuels to convert natural forms of energy into electricity and employing almost no living human labor power from which ordinary capital appropriates surplus value (including profit, interest, rent and tax). What this means is that these are not ordinary machineries, or rather they behave like perpetuum mobile as Marx describes those that last forever. In the 19th Century, after the Industrial Revolution, say between 1820 and 1840, "Machinery inserts itself to replace labor only where there is an overflow of labor power. Machinery enters only where labor capacity is on hand in masses." (Marx: "Grundrisse" translated by Martin Nicholaus, 1973, p.702) Nowadays climate change has rendered energy-conversion machinery necessary without considering replacement of labor power as the purpose. "It is easy to form the notion that machinery as such posits value, because it acts as a productive power of labor. But if machinery requires no labor, then it would be able to increase the use value; but the exchange value which it would create would never be greater than its own costs of production, its own value, the labor objectified in it. It creates value not because it replaces labor; rather, only in so far as it is a means to increase surplus labor, and only the latter itself is both the measure and the substance of the surplus value posited with the aid of the machine; hence of labor generally." (Footnote, pp.767-768) Now it's clear that its circulation capital or electricity as a commodity realized after being consumed by customers (mainly the working masses as direct producers) cannot exceed the objectified labor value in machinery. The diminished exchange value due to depreciation, wear and tear of the machinery that employs no human labor power is a major drawback to the appreciation of capital. In addition, were the renewables wide-spread in use, the number of affordable direct producers (A.K. electricity consumers) would decrease because the renewables would not hire workers. As a result, the price of electricity together with its value would decrease. Capitals of the renewables could not expect capitalist expanded reproductions and they would find they had nowhere to go except bankrupt. To sum up, in the capitalist world, only a tiny portion of the total electricity production will be of renewable nature. The Koch brothers would rather die than face up to penalty and regulations that oblige them to change their monopoly capital investment in coal to the renewables. On the other hand, in a socialist world, people would enjoy whole-heartily renewable energy because the principle of common good will supersede the principle of maximization of private profits, namely in a few words borrowed from Paul Krugman, "climate change can't be fought without overthrowing capitalism" or in a few state-capitalist countries, climate change can't be fought without state-subsidized investments. The U.S. wastes no time to block and fight against effort to combat global warming. See 0) <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/wind-sun-and-fire.html?action=cli ck&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-regi on®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/wind-sun-and-fire.html?action=clic k&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-regio n®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region 1) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-koch-brothers-dirty-war-on-sol ar-power-20160211 2) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-emp ire-20140924?page=2 3) <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/supreme-court-blocks-obama-ep a-coal-emissions-regulations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSourc e=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_ r=0> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/supreme-court-blocks-obama-epa -coal-emissions-regulations.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource =story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r =0 4) <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/us/politics/carbon-emissions-paris-climat e-accord.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&modu le=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/us/politics/carbon-emissions-paris-climate -accord.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&modul e=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news 5) <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/energy-environment/rooftop-solar -providers-face-a-cloudier-future.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&click Source=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top- news> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/business/energy-environment/rooftop-solar- providers-face-a-cloudier-future.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickS ource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-n ews 6) <http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/after-paris-the-state-of-americ as-electricity-sector-emissions> http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/after-paris-the-state-of-america s-electricity-sector-emissions 7) <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/business/energy-environment/climate-deals -first-big-hurdle-the-draw-of-cheap-oil.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage &clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav =top-news> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/business/energy-environment/climate-deals- first-big-hurdle-the-draw-of-cheap-oil.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage& clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav= top-news Climate change is but one of the many problems that require radical changes of a dying system if it is to be saved for a time. Others include economic structural crises; gold worker's productivity-based depreciations, in price and value, of commodity, means of subsistence, and means of production as labor power rather devotes its major portion of working hours to produce surplus value than create new value for the society ; decline of socio-average rate of profit; automation-driven over-production, excess production capacity, over accumulation of capital which necessarily and deliberately creates a surplus population and a long-term reserve army of unemployed labor as well as transforms economic crises into financial crises; temporal decline of capital value in commodity, real estate, debt, stock and other financial assets such as currency; etc. Since the main-stream economist class has been at a loss to save the system from the danger of demise for a very long time, now it's the people's duty as well as their privilege to take the solution of these problems into their own hands. Mark Wain --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
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