On Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:06:50 +0900, you wrote: >http://www.publici.org/dtaweb/report.asp?ReportID=549&L1=10&L2=10&L3=0 >&L4=0&L5=0 > >Special Report >The Politics of Energy: Oil & Gas >How a gusher of giveaways to oil and gas industry was crafted in Congress > >By Bob Williams and Kevin Bogardus > >(WASHINGTON, December 15, 2003)-The sweeping energy bill now pending >in Congress offers a geyser of new tax breaks and other government >goodies for energy companies and related industries. Although the >1,200-page bill stalled out in the Senate in November, legislative >backers have sworn to revive it early in the 2004 session of Congress.
Keith: Thank you for posting these various essays. Although I don't agree with every word in them, I want to comment on the one linked above. We advocates of looking into alt-fuels are so often met with a response that goes something like: "You have good intentions, and alt fuels are perhaps a good idea for the future, but they're not ready right now, and even if the technology is ready, the price is not competitive with the present fossil fuel paradigm". In light of articles like the above, I think part of our response should now be: "How would anyone be able to say that alternative fuels cannot now compete on price with fossil fuels, since any pretext of a level economic competitive playing field continues to be ruined by these subsidies for fossil fuels? If fossil fuels are so little in need of economic help.... if it is the alt fuels such as ethanol and electricity and biodiesel which are supposedly the weak sisters.... then what on Earth is the rationale for these billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in *non-free-market* socialist tax breaks and subsidies for these fossil fuels? I want to say that I *love* the oil and other fossil fuels industries, to the extent that they are men and women identifying and using the bounty that nature has afforded us. People in those industries accomplish herculean and ingenious feats every day now for hundreds of years. But if nature has had hundreds of millions of years to prepare these finite resources for us, here in the relatively early days of our Industrial Revolutions, and if (for the sake of discussion... though I'm not sure I agree) it is thus presently temporarily so bountiful that it is economically more competitive to use that bounty than to push for use of alternatives, then why are *additional* hideously massive taxpayer-funded subsidies necessary? If they are necessary for reasons other than sheer immediate political payoffs, such as national security needs that mesh alongside other measures, such as pushing for more permanent domestic production of sustainable fuels, then I could see the argument. But the pushers of these subsidies are *not* fighting for renewable fuels or any sort of sustainable anything, in any sort of *meaningful* way, nor are they fighting wholeheartedly for domestic production of power and retention of attendant jobs and monies. On the contrary, the three years of the Bush Administration, if anything, amount to a concerted assault on the future of sustainable power technologies, by ignoring them (the Elsworth Toohey strategy) more than anyone could possibly justify, by using discussion to claim that their efficacy is minimal when this is not true, by failing utterly to do even the most modest of obvious political ploys such as decent-sized government orders for newer and better technologies and such as by actual real-world support for distributed homeowner power and fuel production. To be fair, the Bush Administration is merely the inheritor of decades or really terrible U.S. national Energy policy. They absolutely did not deserve, coming in, to be singled out for what is the responsbility of many men and women from all areas over many decades. But they have conspicously failed to make speech or take action of even rudimentary ideas. So, we must add their names to the list, in my view, of politicians who have not only failed to implement good policy, but who have deliberately implemented bad and damaging policy. In any event, the billions (dozens of billions?) in subsidies inherent to the energy bill, as discussed in the article linked above, are so nakedly hypocritical of this Bush Administration that not much further argument is necessary, on the narrow issue of how they could support this thing. If they do support it, they give up their right (as they have already, so many times) to claim any support for free market solutions. They give up their right to claim they are not bald-faced purveyors of political pork (ostensibly "Conservatives" should be against such pork... but is the Bush ADministration made up of "Conservatives"?). They give up their right to fully rebut many of the accusations as to the levels to which they are beholden to the Fossil Fuel and established (status quo) power industries. There have been many times in the last three years when I have thought that some of the criticisms leveled against the Bush Administration, particularly as pertains to Oil, are outright petty ankle-biting nonsense, not at all to the point, and helping only to make a martyr of President Bush and distract from real criticism. But I do think such criticisms seem valid to this point: my take on their policy is they will support "good" Energy Policy *so long as it does not encourage progress in alternatives to the present status quo fossil fuel and nuclear paradigm*. Good policy for American Citizens and the world is sort of wanted, but is subordinated to other forces. Those forces seldom seem to jibe with policy that is good policy for American citizens in the long term. That's such a terrible contradiction (to claim to want to do what's right for energy policy, pre or post 9-11... but then to continue to subordinate that to a very different set of priorities) that their best protection is that most of the criticisms of them are often so oversimplified that the Adminsitration comes off looking sort of mixed. JMO MM Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
