Second in a series (1, 2) that began on “Earth Day” (0).
“In order to make Policy, you have to be good at Politics.”
– Deborah Stone, “Policy Paradox”
President Obama, Official Photo
I like and respect President Obama. I think he’s a well educated lawyer and law school professor, with a good grasp of the Constitution, and the realities of Chicago machine politics and Inside-The-Beltway politics. He understands Stone. He’s also a moderate liberal. However, his economic advisors – Tim Geithner and Larry Sommers – only know what’s good for Wall Street, so every answer is “what’s good for Wall Street.” They don’t appear to know anything about ecological economics. Obama needs to listen to Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, Paul Krugman, Robin Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and others with a long term view and a better understanding of what neoclassical economists call “externalities.”
Perhaps worse, his energy secretary, Steven Chu, is focused on carbon sequestration, nuclear power, and what we might as well call “Drill Baby, Opps.”
I heard Secretary Chu on “On Point” on NPR talk about energy on 5/5/10. He said “we need to be competitive with new 21st C. energy technologies.” He’s right. However, when asked point blank, “Why not just require all new homes to have solar panels, the way the cars require catalytic converters?” Chu, who’s from California – which leads the U.S. in PV solar, who therefore should
know about solar power, hemmed, hawed and spoke about conservation.
The Deepwater Horizon Spill
Conservation is important. We probably waste 70% or more of the BTU’s and KWH we generate,* but even if we were 100% efficient, we would still continue to need to produce energy. With all due respect, Chu’s “New Energy Vision” – Coal Oil and Nuclear – is 50 years old.
The Kingston, Tennessee coal ash spill of 12/22/08 (Earth Observatory, CNN) was a disaster. The Upper Big Branch mining accident of 4/5/10 (MSHA) was tragic: 29 miners lost their lives. Their families will be devestated. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (NYTimes) was also tragic: 11 riggers lost their lives. But if the oil enters the Guld Stream, (and it’s called the Gulf Stream because it originates in the Gulf) it will be catastrophic. When interviewed on NPR on 5/5/10, Mary Landry, Coast Guard Rear Admiral “slipped” in describing BP as “our partner.” That was a telling slip. We can’t allow the Administration to continue to privatize economic gains and dump economic liabilities on the taxpayers.
Gov. Palin, Official Photo
If I wanted a President who supported offshore drilling, I’d have voted for John McCain. We need to hold Barack Obama accountible for his promises.
Chu himself said “We need to lay the foundation by which we are able to compete on 21 C energy in 25 to 50 years.” This is wind, solar, geothermal, and marine current, not coal, oil, and nuclear. Wind is $2 or $3 per watt at a utility scale. Solar is $5.75 per watt installed today in NJ on a residential scale, and probably $4.25 per watt on a utility scale, and is dropping – with maintenance costs in the north-east that are close to $0. Coal with Carbon Capture and Sequestration is $14.22 per watt (assuming it works). I can’t calculate nuclear costs because I don’t have sufficient data. However, it starts at $8 to $10 per watt without factoring in the costs of the NRC, the Price Anderson Act and other government costs and taxpayer subsidies – for fuel, waste management, oversight, regulation – How do you price security costs for 100 to 1000 years?
Senator Al Franken
As Sen. Al Franken might say, “There are a lot of funny people in Washington. Most, however, are not funny on purpose.”
Obama is now pushing loan guarantees – taxpayer subsidies -for coal with CCS, offshore drilling, and nuclear power, none of which are clean, renewable, or good for the economy or the planet. He campaigned on Clean Energy, not “Drill Baby, Opps.” The President should be listening to Van Jones, Amory Lovins, Bill McKibben, Roger Saillant, and me; not Stephen Chu, Don Blankenship and Sarah Palin.
Whether you define sustainability as “meeting the needs of people today in ways that do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs”, like the Bruntland Commission, “flourishing today and forever,” like John Eherenfeld, or “harnessing natural processes rather than consuming and destroying natural resources and creating toxic wastes”, nuclear and fossil fuels are not sustainable.
Al Gore
As Al Gore (350.org, RepowerAmerica) said, “we are borrowing from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf /rip coal out of the ground/ and burning it ways that are destroying the planet. Every bit of that has got to change.” Deepwater Horizon was not what Gore had in mind.
— Note —
* The Toyota Prius and Honda Insight get 45 to 50 mpg with technology that has been commercially viable for 10 years. If the mean milage of the North American auto fleet is 22.5 mpg, and it’s probably less, then 50% of the gasoline burned in the US is wasted. And that’s assuming that every mile driven by every car is necessary, no energy is used in drilling, refining or transporting gas, and, no oil is spilled. The Bright Automotive Idea One is a 100 mpg delivery van. If that design was incorporated into cars, then about 77.5% of the gasoline we consume is wasted.