vitamin_j

Obama's Green Obsession: More Harm Than Good?

What a poorly reasoned article. Yes, if we just understood the "real scientists" we'd see that smoking doesn't cause cancer - we should really do some more studies - and that we really should do a few more decades of research to see exactly what all this manmade CO2 is doing to our atmosphere before we sound any alarms. Really, this is just Exxon or Tobacco level reasoning, where you throw a few isolated "scientific" facts/statistics in to give credibility (yes, with a few stats in paragraph XI you've really exposed the hidden lies behind a whole industry).

Once I got past the windy and in this case unnecessary theoretical discussion (mostly ornamental, dressing up a weak argument in fancy terms), you seem to argue that Obama should not try to jump start an alt energy industry because coal and gas have already reached economies of scale. Basically, we wouldn't want to alter the status quo; after all it's already so well established.

This ignores the fact that some pretty modest government support has already brought solar within sight of becoming an economy of scale, with all the same advantages that supposedly can only exist with coal and gas. And that future support is intended to get them to the point of being self-sufficient economies of scale. That's with today's technology mind - that's not mentioning efficiency or manufacturing improvements, or recent advances like the discovery at MIT of a better catalyzed hydrogen production that could work with solar power. Finally, talking about any form of energy generation as if it exists without massive government incentives and direct or indirect support is just naive. The coal, gas, nuclear, and oil industries are already just as supported by government as your supposed anti-free market green sources would be.

You also seem to think that building alt energy generation, at least in the timeframe Obama discusses, means massively decommissioning coal and gas plants and immediately eliminating those industries. This is just not the case, and nobody serious is saying it will be anything but a very phased process. It just serves your argument that Obama's plan will kill jobs, which is the standard entrenched corporate interest argument against doing anything. You give a hysterical, straw man version of the plan so you can easily knock it down.

Finally, your article has no mention of carbon costs. They probably don't exist to you, but the Pentagon and the CIA are already planning for the security ramifications of global warming, insurers are already adjusting actuarial tables for it, and investment banks are already growing leery of financing coal plant building. Though I would argue that the equation is already in alt energy's favor, it really really becomes in alt energy's favor once you factor in the previously externalized cost of carbon.

Really, I could go on, but I'd like to get a sandwich. Very poor. You should read Neal Dikeman on cleantechblog. He's also a skeptic of the Obama plan, but at least he can write.