Power to the People?

I find myself using this phrase too often lately: "I don't get it."

All day Friday I was watching the debate in the US House over the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, I kept saying, "I don't get it." (Yes I realize Michael Jackson died, but I didn't need to watch 24/7 coverage of the aftermath) Like many of the Representatives that spoke on the floor of the House, I find some pretty fuzzy logic in this bill, and I'm very cautious of anything that gets voted through without having a chance to be studied.

We are still trying to untangle the so-called "stimulus" bill from months ago, and have yet to see any of the "stimulus" effects out here in flyover country (Star Tribune). "The Labor Department said Tuesday that jobless rates in May rose from a year earlier in all 372 metropolitan area it tracks....The U.S. unemployment rate climbed to a quarter-century high of 9.4 percent in May." (Star Tribune) I'm not feeling very stimulated, are you?

So the Cap & Trade thing...I don't get it. I need someone to explain to me how making energy more expensive is going to help any of us in tough economic times. How is it "not a tax" on the middle class to make it cost more to heat your house or drive your car? How is driving jobs from the US to China and other unregulated countries going to save the environment? I don't get it.

But the ruling party reminds us again that "they won," so they can do as they wish.

Look, in many ways we're on the same side when it comes to the future of the US energy industry. I think most Americans hate buying oil from people that hate us and would like to kill us. I think both sides see the need to save American jobs and to create new ones. I love the planet as much as the next guy, and would like to have a clean place to hand off to my descendants.

We disagree on the approach. A huge tax increase and penalties on all of the companies we depend on to produce today's energy can't be the best approach. We're smart people and we can do better. I read that the French, Japanese, Russians and Koreans are working together to build a nuclear power plant in VietNam. No really! Google it if you don't believe me. Hanoi can have clean, cheap electricity but Minnesota can't.

I heard one Representative from the left side of the aisle talking about five million green jobs the bill would create (I can only speculate how many will be temporary assignments swapping light bulbs at the Metrodome for LEDs and filling attics with insulation...then what?). It seems to ignore all the job that will be lost as all sectors absorb the higher cost of energy and have to cut jobs in order to stay afloat.

The bill creates incentives for "new" energy sources like the wind and the sun (the Sun is new..?), while ignoring that the real impact on the environment that has everyone wringing their hands is from the existing dirty coal-burning plants. If you could make coal 1% more efficient, you could out-do all solar power by a factor of thirty (source).

Now I admit I'm not the brightest bulb (and thank God for that, they would Cap & Trade me if I was!) but it seems that you could make a much smaller investment in the coal - energy industry you could create all kinds of job retrofitting coal plants with doohickeys to make the coal burn better and cleaner. And at the same time, you could sell the technology to the rest of the world to make their plants cleaner too.

Oh, and if you are the guy or gal that invents that next doohickey to make coal burn 1% cleaner, you should win the Nobel prize and go live on an island somewhere in luxury for the rest of your days.

I want to save the planet. I want to save jobs and I want to save the economy. I think the best approach is to deal with reality first: humans are going to continue to burn wood, coal, and oil for at least another generation. Shouldn't we figure out how to do this as cleanly as possible? Sure, we should try to invent the next big thing (nuclear power anyone?) at the same time, but lets be smart about what we already have, too.

The big tax increase during a recession? I don't get it.