Frankly, when you compare how America has responded to the 1973 oil shock and how Denmark has responded, we look pathetic.
“I have observed that in all other countries, including in America, people are complaining about how prices of [gasoline] are going up,” Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told me. “The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil. We are going to introduce a new tax reform in the direction of even higher taxation on energy and the revenue generated on that will be used to cut taxes on personal income ”” so we will improve incentives to work and improve incentives to save energy and develop renewable energy.”
Because it was smart taxes and incentives that spurred Danish energy companies to innovate, Ditlev Engel, the president of Vestas ”” Denmark’s and the world’s biggest wind turbine company ”” told me that he simply can’t understand how the U.S. Congress could have just failed to extend the production tax credits for wind development in America.
Why should you care?
“We’ve had 35 new competitors coming out of China in the last 18 months,” said Engel, “and not one out of the U.S.”
Until we get rid of NIMBY, we won’t have new nuclear plants, or new massive wind farms spoiling the view of the coast.
Well, someone’s trying:
http://zenpotluck.com/?p=17
What this means, of course, is that wind is uneconomical on its own merits.
Take a dollar from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers and by the time it gets “redistributed” to where Congress says it should go, you are down to only 20 or 30 cents, the rest going to line the pockets of the bureaucracy, greedy government contractors in connivance with Congress, and general fraud/waste/mismanagement. These types of “do good” taxes are a lot like drinking too much. You get a warm, pleasant feeling at the time and feel good, but when you wake up with a nasty hangover, you’re not so happy about the whole thing.
Comparing the USA to Denmark is a bit silly. I did some quick Googling and see that the only US state that comes close in both area and population is Maryland. Denmark has 5.5 million people in 16,000 sq. mi, Maryland has 5.3 million in 12,000 sq. mi. Also, a large proportion of the folks in Denmark live in Copenhagen, a flat and compact city with, as with most European cities, excellent public transportation – primarily due to the high price of energy. I have spent several months in Europe, and their energy bill takes a huge bite out of everything. IMHO, USA needs to (1) set a future date as a cut-off where no petro-chemicals will be used to generate electricity, to (2) open up drilling offshore and in ANWR, to (3) build numerous nuclear and clean-burning coal-fired power plants, and to (4) tell Saudi Arabia to take a hike. OPEC is sticking it to the world with glee, as we are all infidels anyway.
Friedman and those who think like he does including Sen. Obama should go ahead and give the govt. an extra dollar for each gallon of gas they use. This is what they are proposing for the rest of us. If it is such a good idea, they should do it voluntarily, but they don’t. They want the govt to act to impose their idiotic ideas on the rest of us. And their ideas are idiotic and non-sensical.
Ed the Roman #3: the same was once true of oil, but it didn’t take us too long to figure out how to tap that energy economically. I suspect we can do the same with wind, nuclear, solar, geothermal. Right now we have a good global transmission system in place for petroleum, which is a current disincentive to developing economic transmission systems for other forms of energy.
thanks for posting the article. imho if oil goes back down, we will go back to our old bad habits; look what happened in the 70’s; didn’t president ford say we would get off oil in 10 years or some such? people don’t do good just because it is the right thing to do, they only do it when it hits the pocketbook. yah, change is painful and we will go screaming all the way, but in the end all will benefit from it, especially our descendants.
#3, perhaps you could elaborate on the claim you make.
It seemed to me the point of saying China had produced 35 competing windmill designers/makers and the US 0 was, that if the US had non-0 such wind engineering businesses it would have more business, full stop. That is, the energy pie would become larger and with it the GNP, etc. etc.; as well as stimulate job creation, and all that. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Even on the floor of the House today the Republican representatives are calling for measures that include, besides drilling, adding alternative energy development into the mix, increasing the total energy production the US is capable of….so those who disapprove had better get on down to the Capitol and tell ’em what’s what –
Laocoon,
Umm, oil was uneconomical how long ago? And wind is uniquely suited for which particular use?
I’m not saying that wind completely sucks. But oil’s usefulness was obvious enough (high BTU/mass! it’s a fluid!) that it didn’t need to be paid for by the govt. You talk about tapping nuclear as if we haven’t already done it, by the way. Nuclear power is a mature technology whose market penetration has primarily been hindered by the political activism of quasi-religious zealots.