Bill James

An Energy Policy that Makes Cents (and Sense)

I would like to talk with you about adjusting a few of your tasks.

1. Self-reliance is vital.
1. a. Priority 1. Everyone plant a garden. It takes 3-5 years to become a competent gardener. It takes 2-5 years for many trees and berries to start providing crops.
1. b. Elect local block captains and organize emergency food storage and distribution in the event of a transport break-down, strike, terrorist attack, storm, etc.... Risks exceed 100%, uncertainty exceeds risk.

1. c. Practice deprivation. Two days a summer, have bike day to work for everyone. Close gas stations one day each weekend. Drop speed limits to 55 mph.

2. Free markets.
2. a. De-monopolizing communications infrastructure caused a radical re-tooling and cost savings.
2. b. Allow Feed-in Tariffs to create a free market. Power generation infrastructure is 69% inefficient (Livermore National Labs) because the regulatory monopoly protects that inefficiency from competition. Germany de-monopolized power generation infrastructure. At a latitude of Winnipeg Canada and the size of two mid-western states, now has more solar collectors than the entire United States. Last year Germans, at private risk, installed 4,000 megawatts of renewable power generation. California's highly subsidized regulated market has added 242 megawatts in the last 5 years. Free markets innovate.
2. c. Allow free market transportation networks. Regulated transportation is 80% inefficient (Livermore Labs) because current transportation is regulated and blocks innovation. CSX (railroad company) is currently running a TV add showing a Prius being loaded onto a rail care and state the can "move a ton 423 miles on a gallon of fuel." Yet ultra-light automated guideways, like Morgantown's Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), are blocked from deployment by urban planners. Morgantown's PRT was built to combat the 1973 Oil Embargo and has delivered 110 million injury-free, oil-free passenger miles. Bureaucrats have no checklist for innovation.
2. d. Stop worrying about CAFE standards; they are a red herring. We have the capacity, like Morgantown's PRT to change highly repetitive travel from a high cost capital event (car, gas, parking, real estate, etc....) to a lower cost service at 200 miles per gallon. Oil prices doubled in 2007, we have a 2X per year problem. CAFE standards are weak by 100 times, they are a .02X per year solution (50% increase in standards divided by 25 years to rotate the car fleet. We must preempt the problem, we cannot adjust it.

3. Women's rights and birth control.

4. Universal service for 6 months to strengthen the social fabric and train in civil defense.