The Position Makers

“When our constituents ask us to do something about gas prices, they don’t want us to raise them,” Mr. Herger said. “Yet by increasing taxes on U.S. energy manufacturers by more than $17 billion, this bill creates a significant disincentive for domestic production, decreasing our energy security and increasing our over-reliance on uncertain foreign supplies.”

i’m getting sick of the BS. seriously. “decreasing our energy security”? “increasing our over reliance on uncertain foreign supplies.”? common…just last week Krugman was saying we were no more dependent on oil today than we were in the late ’70s and now we have Republicans claiming that shifting energy policy to renewables is going to cause an increase in reliance upon foreign supplies?  i guess he didn’t take the time to look at the situation from a non-biased, informed perspective.  i guess he also[convienently] forgot about our war in the middle east…oh, right…that was to stop “terrorism”…right…

considering he’s been getting a majority of his funding from businesses this shouldn’t be a big surprise. we live in a nation supported by a few select mega-industries and there’s a lot of vested interest in protecting the “investments” in those mega-industries.

–relevant email to a discussion group i’m a part of–

it’s pretty funny to me actually. i mean on the one hand we want the “beautiful affects” of creative destruction within our economic system–but only so long as it doesn’t affect me or my business or my employer or my investment. as soon as creative destruction threatens an elite’s business segment (such as mega-agriculture or coal mining or healthcare or XYZ-issue * 1000), we don’t want creative destruction to touch us, so “we” put up policy infrastructures to prevent the affects of a market system.

i’m trying to address the contradictory nature of the status quo within the context of our society.

maybe we can’t look to history for help in shaping policies that would be socio-economic solutions to our current malaise of corruption and greed since there really isn’t a precedence for it. … europe, france and germany in particular, aren’t very illustrative examples since the economic recovery and growth they experienced after WWII was simply a result of needing to rebuild everything. germany hasn’t grown much since “everything” was rebuilt, especially now that eastern germany is pretty much back up to snuff. the real benefits to a society, as measured by capitalism, seem best framed by how much destruction occurred from war. chompsky gave a talk two days ago and cited chechnya as being on the road to recovery but he contextualized everything as being a recovery from russia’s bombardments. he deridingly said, “maybe iraq can one day experience the recovery chechnya is experiencing now…but that’s doubtful.”

i think in the case of the US, our best hope for sustained growth would be in moving toward renewables. power-production is a big $$ industry and getting our nation converted over from coal and n.gas would spur a lot (read as “SHIT TON”) of economic development–and make jobs. i think this is pretty appealing and i suspect it’s one reason, among many, that nader is pushing for solar. (as a shareholder in a US-based solar company, that also has the sound of “subsidies” to it…which will benefit me w/ a higher stock price. lol.

–end of email–

hubbert peak has some interesting graphs showing US domestic production of oil:

(the black line is US production; the red is our nation’s demand)

so wtf is mr. herger talking about?  seems suspect to me.

wired magazine has an interview with fred krupp, environmental defense fund’s head honcho, with some amazing quotes: (thanks environmental economics for bringing the wired article to my attention!)

responding to a question about competition from india and china as a result of us implementing mandatory and severe caps on emissions:

Krupp: It’s inevitable that those countries will adopt caps, too. We will gain a competitive advantage by going first. The real question is, do we want to import clean tech from Germany, Japan, and China or export it to the rest of the world?

very important question. i’m not sure what happened to the buzz of the early “2000s” but there were articles flying about that the US was falling far, far, far behind on in educating future engineers.  (for example, anyone remember the world is flat ?) one of our key advantages in the market place now is our head start over developing nations. that being said, china and india have really illustrated that it only takes a single generation to catch up.

in my mind, this becomes not only a question of economic competitiveness but future national security and prosperity.  i’m sure it will only be a bit of time before the “far” right “sees” the light…but i’ll bet that happens AFTER they liquidate their oil holdings–or make a big enough push for those companies to invest in alternatives.

an oldie but definititive goodie:

Look at what’s happening at Royal Dutch/Shell. Five years ago, working with Hamel, the company’s exploration-and-production division set aside 10% of its research budget for “crazy” ideas, proposals that were far removed from its existing operations. Anyone in the division could apply for the funding. And a group of four or five employees — all of them well-known mavericks and nonconformists — were charged with deciding how the money got spent. The strategy was called GameChanger.

Consider the implications. There were millions of dollars set aside for no specific purpose. The accountants hated that. The people making the funding calls weren’t managers, so they weren’t wedded to any existing projects. “Experience shows that in a normal hierarchy, people don’t like ideas that do not support their businesses,” says Leo Roodhart, innovation manager for the Shell group. “These were ideas that by definition didn’t fit with current business thinking.”

GameChanger creates a marketplace within Shell for ideas. Proposals are assessed within one week of application. If they are judged promising, they win seed capital and support. If early results meet expectations, the innovation is marketed within the Shell Group. So far, GameChanger has attracted hundreds of proposals. It has funded 150 projects a year, 10% of which have become commercialized.

another interesting quote, back to wired:

Wired: Why are so many of the leaders of the energy revolution the same folks who led the dotcom boom?

Krupp: It’s the mindset: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are willing to take risks. And many of the energy technologies are founded in computing sciences. But the energy business is much more capital-intensive than Web apps. And ultimately, clean tech is a much more important revolution. We’re talking about the future of humanity, not how to find a date on the Internet.

i’m going to post on this separately because i feel it’s deserving of its own post but take BP as a counter-example.

the company yesterday admitted to having enough reserves to maintain output at 4 million barrels per day until 2020, without locating new reserves.  basically, the company said it has 12 years of viable operation left. (and here’s why it deserves its own post,) the CEO went on to allude that they may divest some of their alternative energy assets. duh! you just said you can only remain well positioned in business for 12 years and you’re going to sell your next, best-hope for remaining a company? what a dumb ass!!

conclusion:  vested interest will make people do stupid things.  greed connected to those vested interests will drive a person to a slow suicide… too bad the jerk, idiots are taking us all down with them!!

can we please, PLEASE get a real leader–or body of leaders???

maybe i should run for president when i’m finally 35…