In today’s WSJ were articles about the price of energy in Europe. In the last 20 years the price of energy has quintupled, that is gone up times 5, as an example, from $1 to $5 per unit of energy.
Why is that? Climate change as it is now called, Global Warming before the numbers didn’t support the warming part as predicted caused reactions that reduced the supply of traditional power and beefed up production of much higher cost power. Nuclear plants shut down after the Japanese tidal wave-in Germany and other places, tidal wave risk? No, “Green” parties and groups screaming an yelling about fossil fuels, a young woman who sailed across the Atlantic to make a vacuous speech at the UN, etc. Meanwhile the US has reduced carbon emissions in line with Europe without the same hysteria. China is now the largest emitter and no matter what they say or do could care less about the trend. India is number two. Both are increasing every year.
Science. We are supposed to believe the scientists, yet hypocrisy rules as usual. We haven’t figured out yet how to store energy from bird killing windmills, or lizard killing solar in the desert economically, maybe we will in the future, that would be nice. Hydro power is available but permitting more dams is out of the question, too much environmental damage and ruining wild and scenic rivers. Yet nuclear is still off limits. OK, let’s not build one near a tsunami zone, but France seems OK with generating 80% of its’ electricity with nuclear. Thus following the science isn’t really a basic go to, only when it is convenient.
As usual we see no negotiation from either side. Only pointing fingers and calling of names. Do we as a country all agree that our energy prices should double or triple from where they are now? They are up twice in the same period that Europe’s have gone up five times. That kind of increase puts a great burden on those who don’t have excess cash to spend on energy. Do we want to depend on Russia, or the Arab countries for fossil fuels versus being independent just to say we eliminated our own fossil fuel production?
We should continue policies that reduce our gross emissions over time, and as a percent of GDP. We should invest in research to increase the capacity of batteries for the home, transportation and grid support; fusion reactors; fuel cell technology; grid updating and efficiency; etc. But we must also ensure we do not impose another undue cost on our economy to meet the desires of the perfect world folks. Evolution, not revolution. Europe’s economy has grown 30-50% slower than ours over time.
Economic growth is the key tactic to reduce poverty, provide assistance to others in need, ensure our citizens see hope in the future.