Energy grab bag

Late edit: this made the “National Commentaries” section on the front page of Red County under a different title: “Republicans Push for Alternative to Cap and Tax.”

Most people are aware of the following facts:

• Gasoline prices have increased on a fairly constant basis since the first of the year. Back in January we were locally paying $1.60 a gallon or so, now it’s close to a dollar more per gallon. That’s at least a $10 difference every time we fill up – for trucks that can be $20 or more.
• Last year the ban on offshore oil exploration was allowed to expire by Congress in the wake of $4 a gallon gasoline.
• It’s been over thirty years since a brand new oil refinery or nuclear power plant has been constructed in the United States. Yet energy demand continues to increase. This is key to a point I’ll make later.

Last week House Republicans introduced H.R. 2846; as they put it it’s an act “To increase energy independence and job creation by increasing safe American energy production, encouraging the development of alternative and renewable energy, and promoting greater efficiencies and conservation for a cleaner environment.” They penned it as a sensible alternative to the cap-and-trade energy tax proposed by Democrats.

One of the co-sponsors spearheading the effort used to be my State Representative when I lived in Ohio, so his comments perked my ears up. Rep. Bob Latta recently wrote a piece on the NetRightNation blog explaining the bill’s intentions. I can already see those on my left foaming at the mouth about the aspect of drilling for own own oil (and extracting oil shale) featured prominently in the bill, and to them I say: tough tiddlywinks. Drill, baby, drill!

Less desirable on my end are the provisions placed deep inside the bill extending a number of tax breaks for various behaviors. Unfortunately – and this is probably to make the bill more palatable to “moderate” Republicans – our side once again falls into the trap liberals love to use of using the tax code to bend the market to its liking. It’s driving us farther from my desire to see a consumption-based or flat tax, but that’s a rant for another time.

Along with language resurrecting President Bush’s idea of using closed military bases for oil refineries (as a pilot program) there is an aspect of the bill I’ve advocated for in the past; however, the wrong people are putting up the money. Buried on page 97 is Section 218 of the bill:

The Secretary of Energy shall establish a program to award a prize in the amount of $500,000,000 to the first automobile manufacturer incorporated in the United States to manufacture and sell in the United States 50,000 midsized sedan automobiles which operate on gasoline and can travel 100 miles per gallon.

Great idea – but why can’t we get all these nonprofits who whined about our gas guzzling cars and wanted the supercharged CAFE fuel economy standards we’ll have in the next decade to pony up the money?

I guarantee though that if this does pass someone would get the bright idea to slap a windfall profits tax on Big Oil to pay for the prize!

Secondly, why does the car have to be a midsize sedan? Personally I think a SUV (like a Jeep Liberty or similar car) would be more useful to a family. And if General Motors or Chrysler wins, who gets the money? That sounds like a loan payback to me. Incentives are good, but this one is perhaps misplaced.

I’ve said all along that there’s nothing wrong with alternative energy if it can be harnessed, distributed, and marketed at a reasonable price without a government subsidy. But when it takes billions of taxpayer dollars to make the prices equal, that’s not a truly free market. (On the other hand, that also goes for enabling those who have surplus energy, such as from a solar panel or windmill, to sell that back to the power company at a rate agreeable to both.)

Anyone making a proposal for solving our energy crisis needs to keep one thing in mind, though: conservation does not equal growth. It’s troubling to me that many put their entire stock of eggs in the conservation basket without factoring in that, as society progresses, more energy is needed to maintain a prosperous lifestyle.

Saving energy has its place but ambitious schemes to cut energy usage (usually couched in the phrase “reducing greenhouse gases by X percent”) would be a difficult feat without reverting our lifestyles to those of twenty to thirty years ago. I really dug the 1980’s as a decade (since they were the Reagan years and the music was great) but I really don’t want to cut my energy usage back to what it was at that point since that may well eliminate the usage of my computer, my cel phone, and many other conveniences we all take for granted. Someone had to make all those things and that took energy as well.

The House GOP made a good countermove to the Democrats’ cap-and-trade scheme, but it needs to go a lot farther than just letting us drill for oil in more places. Let’s refine our plan to be the ambitious one to reduce government, not rearrange it like deck chairs on our national Titanic.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael