I don't know. But I assume, since they are Europeans, that they hike up the gas tax, but don't give the people and corporations a tax break. Instead just keep the revenues to spend on other crap.
Another Chicken Little thread by PapaG, what a surprise. Many people here in Beautiful Central Oregon live completely off the grid, with Solar and Wind technology providing all the power they need to run their household. The cost actually ends up being quite a bit cheaper than gas or oil or electricity from a conglomerate provider if you do the math over 20 years or so. And it's so much healthier and so much less polluting. Some people just can never accept change, no matter how large the benefit to them.
Yes, it takes 20-30 years to recoup the costs...that is assuming of course, costs stay the same. As technology develops it should get cheaper, so if you're an early adoptee, you're getting ripped off!
That would be true except that gas, oil, and electricity keep getting more costly to the consumer. 20-30 years from now it is unlikely they will be affordable enough to be used by most Americans on a daily basis. I remember filling my Rambler's gas tank for $3.00 and paying $60 for a winter's worth of oil for the furnace while making $14 an hour driving a forklift back in the early 70's as a teenager in my first union job. You'd be lucky to find the same wage ($14 hr) nowadays for that job let alone find a forklift job whose pay has increased proportionately (to roughly $140 an hour). Thank Reagan for busting the unions and enslaving hundreds of millions of Americans for generations to come. If you're 18 or so right now, know that you would/should be making $140 hour right now, fresh out of high school, as long as you showed up for work and were willing to do your very best. You could afford to take your girl to a concert for $4 a ticket, support your 35 cents-a-pack cigarette habit, buy a dozen LP's a week, trick out your ride, get a guitar or a new stereo, pay for college, all the while saving for your retirement on top of the nice retirement package from your loyal employer. You could see a Dentist about that toothache right away. That is how far the scales of avarice and treason have tilted your fate over the last 4 decades, and the people who withhold/supply energy to you are the same people who tilted the scales so unjustly. From Standard Oil's Vietnam to Halliburton's Iraq they've made a mockery of America and of Americans. They've murdered by proxy and they've billed the victims handsomely for the privilege. And it's all been done with smoke and mirrors, because the Sun actually supplies by itself all the energy required to operate the entire planet. Always has. That is it's job. Solar and wind technology are very simple, very basic, and will be pretty much DYI kits everyone buys and assembles in the near future. I know people who have already designed and built their own. It's not rocket science. They should be common classroom science projects in schools. Wind tech. isn't at a practical stage IMO, and won't be until it can provide much more energy with tiny windblades on your roof, because otherwise it's a butt-ugly blight on the landscape. Solar is there, and we can harness it fine, but battery development is actually all that is holding it back for vehicles. Combined with basic passive solar designed homes, current technology is more than enough to run homes in many climates/ares. Germany is kicking ass with solar, because their government got behind it. I'm liking this President more every day.
Well, considering that we get the majority of our oil from non-Middle East countries, I don't see what your problem is. http://perotcharts.com/2008/07/united-states-oil-imports-by-country-march-2008/ Also, we're the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have vast shale oil deposits. We have terrific nuclear technology and large uranium deposits in the Southwest. Why aren't those proven reserves tapped at a higher rate? If the goal is self-reliance, it's more than possible. If the goal is to produce clean energy, go all nuclear. As for 19th century technologies, plenty of them still work and work well. Just because an idea is old doesn't make it bad. This bill is a feel-good measure based on unproven technologies.
Shouldn't the "proper funding" come from the private sector? If it has the capability to make money, VC folks will find it. The paucity of VC investment in these technologies shows that the private sector thinks its a money loser.
I now understand your bitterness. Labor is a commodity like anything else. In the long term, all profits go to zero. Brainpower now captures the wealth in the value chain. Muscle is paid what it's worth--not much. I'm sorry our society has evolved beyond you.
I already responded to that point to blazerboy. In most cases, I agree. I think some markets need to be forced forward, because the market forces value only the present. Which is generally the right focus, but just because oil is the most efficient form of energy right now doesn't mean that other things shouldn't be developed for the future, even if it is not profitable now. That is where I feel government has an investing role...things that are important that private investors either can't do (space exploration) or have no current incentive to do (find a clean, renewable source of energy). Right now, with oil still plentiful and efficient, there's no great profitability in other things, but I think it's still important to develop so that it's in place when we need it. It may not be profitable at the moment. That doesn't mean it isn't important for the future.
Didn't I read somewhere that Beautiful Central Oregon gets 300 days of bright, clear sunshine a year. To compare, Seattle and Portland get around 55-65 days (depending on the source...and Portland gets more). And isn't Beautiful Central Oregon on a high plateau, meaning that more direct sunlight is received at the panels rather than being scattered through another 3-5k feet of atmosphere? I'm not an expert in solar technology, but isn't relatively direct sunlight a requirement for efficient use?
COuple of random thoughts after reading through this thread... Hasn't GM (which is now going bankrupt) been the company that has invested the most heavily in electric car technology? In Dr. Phil's terms....how's that working for ya? Why is it that people keep bringing up European countries as models for energy use, when by-and-large they use the following: geothermal, nuclear, oil, diesel. It's not like there are wind farms scattered all over France that light up the Eiffel Tower each night. Wind's unpredictable. So is sun. If you want a "renewable" source of energy...harness tides. Anyone can look up what and when the tides will be at almost any place on earth at almost any date in the relatively long future. It happens 2 (or 4) times per day. The earth and moon do it for us. How about harnessing that? But nope....solar and wind are the new buzzwords. And unless someone can help me with my error, neither the President nor anyone in his cabinet (other than SoE) has a technical degree and a body of work in the job they're in, though the Director of EPA is a chemical engineer by education. Shaun Donovan with HUD had a BS in Engineering on his way to being an architect. The rest are PoliSci, history, economics, etc. I'm happy that the Pres picked a scientist guy for SecEnergy. Actually, I'm reading more googled stuff on Dr. Chu. He didn't advocate against "climate change", it was against "global warming", which I'll leave to Denny to explain the difference between. He led LBNL over the last few years while they looked into biofuels and renewable solar energy stuff. He said California farms could be wiped out by global warming within the century, and advocates that nuclear power is a way to go.
Every time I hear this point of view, I think of the words of Jonas Salk. He said if the government had driven polio research, we would have had the world's best iron lung instead of a vaccine. The problem when you have one entity that doesn't have competition, one group of people, generally less qualified, pick a winner. I prefer to let the market do it. If the market decides now is not the time, then there are times when bureaucrats just have to let people live and make what they perceive to be mistakes.
