damn. just... damn. well, a buck a gallon tax on individuals. 3 a gallon tax on coorporate interests. trucking fleets. as for the rest of it. sounds good to me.
On 7/28/05, Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mike Carrell wrote: > > >OK guys, it's 'they should have' all over again and ignoring the > >responsibilities of CEOs of energy comapnies. I might be wrong, but I > >believe Shell is deeply into PV systems and regrds itself as an energy > >company, not an "oil" company. I have heard second and third hand similar > >sentiments attributed to other oil CEOs. > > So have I. But when you look at the amounts they spend on R&D, and scale of > their commitment, you see this is mostly window dressing and public > relations blather. They are not taking serious, large scale steps, and -- > equally important -- they are not lobbying Congress to give them a tax > break to build things like wind-turbine based hydrogen fuel systems. > Instead, they are asking for massive tax breaks to drill for more oil and > to distort the market in favor of waste and pollution. And of course > Congress has given them all they ask for, on a silver platter. > > The fossil fuel companies should be building the equivalent of 4 or 5 > nuclear power plants per year. powered by wind. (Or powered by uranium, for > that matter.) That would make a substantial impact by the end of the > decade. In 10 or 20 years it would eliminate oil imports. If they had > started 20 years ago, and at the same time the auto companies had building > millions of hybrid cars, the U.S. would be exporting oil today. We would be > a member of OPEC, and we would only have one quarrel in the Middle East. We > would be demanding that Saudi Arabia cut production and stop undermining > our profits. > > These are not technological fantasies. They were described by mainstream > sources such as the Scientific American back in the 1970s and 80s. Hybrid > cars were invented and patented in 1906, for crying out loud. The solutions > to the energy crisis have been sitting on the shelf, untouched, for most of > the 20th century. > > > >Jed has been fuming about the slow progress of CF for a decade or so now, > >but you don't hasten crops by pulling on the shoots. > > Oh come now, Mike. Every CF researcher I know has dozens of experiments he > is yearning to try. Those people could use hundreds of grad students and > millions of dollars in funding, and if they had been given what they need > ten years ago, by now we probably would have prototype CF automobiles. The > difficulties have been exaggerated. > > > >There is no technical substitute for oil now or in the near future, and it > >goes well beyond transportation. > > I disagree completely! There have been technical substitutes available off > the shelf since 1906. Of course we cannot eliminate oil overnight, but we > sure could drastically cut consumption overnight -- I mean literally, > within 24 hours -- and we could eliminate the problem completely in 10 or > at most 20 years. The automobile fleet is replaced every 5 to 10 years. > (Only a handful of cars last longer than 10 years.) If the U.S. was serious > about the war in Iraq, and this so-called war on terror, we would take > drastic steps such as: > > 1. Impose an emergency wartime tax of $2 per gallon to pay for the war. If > consumption does not fall by at least 20%, impose rationing. > > 2. Impose a draft, and send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Iraq and > Afghanistan. If we do not do this, we will lose both wars for sure, so we > might as well bring all the troops home now. We are losing in slow motion now. > > 3. Ban the production of SUVs immediately. Ban the use of SUVs in urban > areas except by authorized people who have a good reason to drive such > vehicles, such as carpenters hauling ladders, lumber or heavy equipment. > > 4. Ban the production of conventional non-hybrid automobile engines > starting in three years, and trucks starting in 5 years. All vehicles must > be hybrid or pure electric. > > 5. Within 10 years, build enough wind power to supply all of the synthetic > fuel or electricity needed for our automobiles and trucks. As I have shown > here before, this is not as much energy as you might think. Conventional > transportation technology is grotesquely wasteful and inefficient, so any > replacement will use only half or one-third as much raw energy. > > A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, the White House made a few phone calls and > *completely closed down all U.S. civilian automobile production for the > duration of the war.* Think about that. They did not negotiate, or set up a > schedule. They called the presidents of Ford, GM and Chrysler and told them > to close their production lines immediately, and not to assemble a single > car without government authorization, and to close all showrooms the next > morning, and not to sell a single automobile to any civilian or > corporation, period. That is the kind of thing you must do to win a war. > Half measures do not work. It is a moral abomination for U.S. civilians and > political leaders to stand around doing nothing to win the war, while > thousands of our soldiers are killed and wounded, and thousands of Iraqi > people killed by terrorists. We must take steps to root out the basic > causes of the war, which are oil, oil money, and Mideast politics. > > Such radical steps may seem like an impossible fantasy now, but so did > airplanes crashing into buildings before 9/11. If terrorists attack with a > stolen nuclear weapon, the steps I listed above will not seem radical. On > the contrary they will seem too little and too late. Or, if serious global > warming sets in, people 100 years from now will say we should have done all > of this and more. > > Freeman Dyson said: "The accepted wisdom says that, no matter what we > decide to do about economic problems, we cannot expect to see any > substantial results [for 15 years]. The accepted wisdom is no doubt > correct, if we continue to play the game by the rules of today. But anyone > who lived through World War II knows that the rules can be changed very > fast when the necessity arises." The question boils down to this: Is this > "war on terror" really a war, or is it just a charade in which we kill and > main ~30,000 lower income Americans from small towns, and then surrender to > the Taliban and al Qaeda and pretend it never happened? > > - Jed > > > -- "Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write" Voltaire
