…a good time to spare an appreciative thought for Willis Carrier.
Enjoy it while you can.
The Democratic Party, egged on by the mainstream media and by its own “progressive” wing, has demonstrated considerable hostility toward energy production in any practical form. And activists of many types have shown great skill in using the legal and regulatory systems to delay energy-related projects…for years, and sometimes for decades.
If we have an Obama presidency and a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate, I think it is likely that in 10 years, the number of people who can afford air conditioning will be much smaller than it is at present.
While ilt is clear that man y Democrats do not like the ideal of drilling etc on American soil in many areas of the nation, nonetheless it is also true that for the past number of years, till recently, the GOP has controlled the White House and the Congress and they have had the power to put through any legislation (see the record to date) that they truly wanted. And they have not given the go-ahead for the very things they are now being blamed for for not doing.
iN TEN YEARS it won’t matter if people can afford air conditioning because the next ice age begins in 2020.
Freddy says:
“the GOP has controlled the White House and the Congress and they have had the power to put through any legislation ”
Fred now say this slowly: Dem-o-crat Fil-i-bust-er”. Ask Janice Rogers Brown.
Oh they will be able to afford air conditioning, they just won’t be able to afford the electricity to power it.
Dan from Madison…perhaps I could have been a bit clearer…my concern is precisely with the electricity, not with the affordability of the A/C devices themselves.
Yep I knew that David, just keeping you on your toes ;). You have made excellent comments on Carl from Chicago’s energy posts in the past.
Maybe while the Democrats were screaming about how we were in Iraq for oil, they outed themselves. Face it, they have limited most off shore drilling and are actively seeking to restrict coal use-which is ludicrous since its the only cheap energy source we have domestically. So perhaps they revealed just a tad too much of their agenda. I am sure that their “green” wing thought that if oil and gas went through the roof, Americans would peacefully lay down their cars and become vegans living off of the fat of the land. Fat chance that. Instead we have every possible aspect of the economy on the rise because of gas costs directly and because of the fallacy that is corn-based ethanol tangentially. Anyway you look at it, it’s just a bunch of bad decisions acted upon to give the appearance of moral superiority.
We are in such deep trouble.
Thank the gopod lord that our president has been in the vanguard of steering the nation on the right energy path and keeping our environment pure…in passing: France gets lots and lots of its energy from nuclear facilities.And guess what: NO waste because it all gets recycled. Further: they have never had an accident. Bujt of course the govt runs the facilities for all the people and that would not sit well free market folks.
But let us not just blame this or that p[arty. The fact is that Americans have gone for bigger and heavier cars. A number of years ago, the same make cars got better MPG…now we have huge cars that eat up fuel. Slowly, though, we are now learning to readjust to mass transportation, smaller cars, careful planning of how and why and where we use vehicles etc…and that may be a good thing.
I note that China and India use a lot of oil these days. They have needs because they now make much of our stuff in their countries. This gives them more wealth. And with that money they are now buying cars, adding to pollution and also eating up fuel.We free market folks seem not to object to OPEC as cartel, so let the market take care of it.
now it is time to dump on Freddie!
Oh, we are! – much of the deep South – including South Texas is just not humanly habitable in the summer without air conditioning. My house is about twenty years old – just not doable in the summer without AC, and believe me – I try. Among my neighbors, I hold out the longest in early summer, and am the first in early fall to fling open the windows and turn the AC off.
A common human-interest story in the San Antonio papers for the last couple of years, has been a human-interest “oh, look at those deluded and/or desperately poor members of the underclass who can’t afford it” survey of those few Luddites who endure without.
Fred Lapides,
Bujt of course the govt runs the facilities for all the people and that would not sit well free market folks.
Nuclear power has been socialized in the U.S. from the get go. The government controlled all the technology, all the materials, all the construction. The only companies who the government allowed to build reactors where public utilities which are government controlled state monopolies.
The government ran the entire nuclear industry from top to bottom and yet the lefties still shut it down. They shut them down because of a misguided belief that crippling civilian nuclear power would stop the production and spread of nuclear weapons. It had nothing to do with resistance by people who believed in the free market.
Americans won’t go for nuclear power because of 30 years of hysterical leftist propaganda that has convinced that nuclear power is a hyper-dangerous unusable technology.
But let us not just blame this or that p[arty
I notice you always say that when leftist are clearly to blame. They shutdown nuclear power and they have systematically shutdown oil production in the U.S. If it isn’t they’re little fantasy solutions of solar power they don’t want to hear about it.
Get this through your thick head. Leftist hate production. They hate when people are material comfortable, free, independent and in no need of rescue. They’re savaging the life support systems of our civilization because they need crisis to justify their political position.
If they’re ideas worked, Detriot would be a paradise.
till recently, the GOP has controlled the White House and the Congress and they have had the power to put through any legislation (see the record to date) that they truly wanted.
So it didn’t matter to you that during that period when drilling came to a vote, _most_ republicans voted for the drilling and _most_ democrats voted against?
You believe that all republicans must be treated like the 10-20% that voted against the drilling, even if they voted for it?
>You believe that all republicans must be treated like the 10-20% that voted against the drilling, even if they voted for it?
Huh?
According to Fred,
This in spite of the details, which is every time it comes to a vote, over 3/4 of the Republicans vote for the drilling and over 3/4 of the Democrats vote against the drilling.
While I agree with the sentiment of the post actually it isn’t congress or the president that has done the most damage… it is the individual states that actually set regulatory policy, in concert with Federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the power industry, primarily FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).
Those states that went from regulated to semi-regulated (no one actually deregulated) suffered the worst damage… those that stayed mostly regulated (Wisconsin, Florida, others) and stayed away from radical change did the best. Our biggest casualties were the pioneers, basically California, whose industry was utterly destroyed. They dragged down the interconnected states of Nevada and Montana into ruin, too.
The federal government contributed to the disaster by taking $ from the utilities for nuclear storage and then providing no storage… this makes nuclear energy much harder to do since you essentially have to store your waste, on site, forever. And many of the FERC’s policy decisions were lame-brained and had onerous effects. The Federal government also periodically basically threatens to shut coal plants through the EPA and regulations… in this area certainly a democratic congress / president combination will be particularly noxious.
Even today the states have the power to fix their own situation, if they have the political will… they need to fight their internal lawyers, raise the money, and have the balls to fight off the inevitable swarms of NIMBY’s that will emerge from every nook and cranny. If they are diligent, they can fight and win.
Alas, most states are like Illinois, NY, California and Maryland… slowly circling the drain while existing capacity gets older and older and new demand comes on line.
Carl…Good point about the states & localities. Also, a huge part of the problem is the development of a massive protest industry, much of it apparently funded by tax-exempt “nonprofit” organizations, along with law firms which are most definitely *not* nonprofit.
I’m concerned not only about generation but also transmission…especially if utility solar power becomes real, it is going to need long lines to carry it to markets, and these lines will generally go through many individual states.
Agreed… no one is going to build that transmission network. It only would possibly make financial sense for someone to do it within their state, not across state lines, unless they improve the regulatory oversight (i.e. build a scheme with rational incentives).
Carl, you mention Wisconsin – we have scads of nimbys here especially around the PRM (Peoples Republic of Madison), but the state is slowly improving its transmission system piece by piece. Lots of signs go up trying to fight these projects, but they always seem to get pushed through.
There is even talk – just talk – of new nukes up here. Time will tell if we ever get a new one (I sure wouldn’t bet on it), but the very fact that people are talking about it around super liberal Madison is true progress.
ATC is to be commended for getting a lot of these transmission projects pushed through.
Is there any investigative reporter looking at the possibility that the Saudis are funding environmental groups? I really hope that it is so, otherwise we have a suicidal culture here.