I’ve written about this many times in this space: the United States has no national plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And it’s only because we have no leadership and, therefore, our tax structure and incentives are inadequate. China, Japan and Germany are the leaders in solar cell production. Below is a link to a recent New York Times article "Germany Debates Subsidies for Solar Industry." Ironically, the dispute in Germany is whether to curtail some incentives, as they’ve been “too successful,” and this in a country that has less annual sunlight hours than much of the United States.
To briefly quote from the article, “with wind, biomass and other alternative energy also growing, Germany derives 14.2 percent of its electricity from renewable sources…At the moment, solar energy adds 1.01 euros ($1.69) a month to a typical home electricity bill, a modest surcharge that Germans are willing to pay.”
The fear in Germany is that surcharge will have to rise to continue to underwrite the expansion of their solar industry. Seems like a small price to pay for energy independence. Strange that the United States will have to follow the leadership of a country that was an adversary only a few decades ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/business/worldbusiness/16solar.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&em&en=21d0c75da6823c40&ex=1211083200
Showing posts with label Alternative Energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alternative Energy. Show all posts
Friday, May 16, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Friedman for President
It is not surprising that the most emailed article from yesterday’s New York Times, is Thomas Friedman’s “Dumb as We Wanna Be”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=c74689f177717558&ei=5087%0A.
I’ve missed reading Friedman who just completed a sabbatical book-writing project that expands an article he wrote for the magazine section a year ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15green.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The book version, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, will be published in August.
Why not start a write-in campaign to elect Friedman President? He always seems to have the right perspective on foreign policy and our economic and energy crisis. I also like his even-tempered demeanor. Someone once said you have to be crazy to want to be the President of the United States. Maybe that is the problem with a plan for his Presidency. Friedman is not crazy.
He calls Clinton and McCain’s proposal for a summer gas tax “holiday” political pandering (Amen) and a form of money laundering, borrowing from China, moving it to the oil producing nations, leaving a little in our gas tanks as the broker for the transaction, but also leaving our children with the debt. The analogy would be funny if it were not so sadly true.
But the rest of the article goes to the core of the problem, not having a game plan to achieve energy independence, and helping to repair our decaying environment along the way, something I’ve also ranted about: http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/12/politics-as-usual-where-is-leader.html
The ongoing political shenanigans over this issue and the lack of a plan are enough to make me sick. I had thought our current administration was just too clueless to grasp the importance of leading our nation to energy independence through alternative solar, wind, and geothermal technologies. Imagine my shock at seeing Laura Bush recently conducting a TV tour of their home in Crawford, Texas, which is replete with geothermal heating and cooling and a system for capturing rainwater and household wastewater for irrigation. I would have expected this from Al Gore, but George Bush?
His public environmental policies are in direct contrast to what he has done in his own home. So it is not a question of not knowing better, it’s knowing better but not leading our country to a better place, an immoral travesty of the public trust. Where would we be today if we had thrown down the gauntlet at the beginning of his Presidency? By delaying a commitment to energy independence, we have made the goal even more difficult as we must now start with massive debt, and a devalued dollar.
Instead, we pour resources into ethanol with the unintended consequences of food shortages and burgeoning food prices. Sounds like a good plan, subsidize the farmers to buy seeds and fertilizer (at triple the cost vs. last year), squeeze out food crops and tax our water resources, buy oil for the energy needed to convert crops to ethanol (be sure to take on more debt to get that oil), and continue to watch fuel prices escalate in spite of increasing ethanol additives, while paying much more for all food staples (hoarding rice along the way).
Yesterday the Federal Reserve laughably said, “readings on core inflation have improved somewhat” (which excludes food and energy). Maybe it’s time we go back to the Consumer Price Index as a fairer measurement of inflation so government has to face the real facts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html?em&ex=1209787200&en=c74689f177717558&ei=5087%0A.
I’ve missed reading Friedman who just completed a sabbatical book-writing project that expands an article he wrote for the magazine section a year ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15green.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The book version, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America, will be published in August.
Why not start a write-in campaign to elect Friedman President? He always seems to have the right perspective on foreign policy and our economic and energy crisis. I also like his even-tempered demeanor. Someone once said you have to be crazy to want to be the President of the United States. Maybe that is the problem with a plan for his Presidency. Friedman is not crazy.
He calls Clinton and McCain’s proposal for a summer gas tax “holiday” political pandering (Amen) and a form of money laundering, borrowing from China, moving it to the oil producing nations, leaving a little in our gas tanks as the broker for the transaction, but also leaving our children with the debt. The analogy would be funny if it were not so sadly true.
But the rest of the article goes to the core of the problem, not having a game plan to achieve energy independence, and helping to repair our decaying environment along the way, something I’ve also ranted about: http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/12/politics-as-usual-where-is-leader.html
The ongoing political shenanigans over this issue and the lack of a plan are enough to make me sick. I had thought our current administration was just too clueless to grasp the importance of leading our nation to energy independence through alternative solar, wind, and geothermal technologies. Imagine my shock at seeing Laura Bush recently conducting a TV tour of their home in Crawford, Texas, which is replete with geothermal heating and cooling and a system for capturing rainwater and household wastewater for irrigation. I would have expected this from Al Gore, but George Bush?
His public environmental policies are in direct contrast to what he has done in his own home. So it is not a question of not knowing better, it’s knowing better but not leading our country to a better place, an immoral travesty of the public trust. Where would we be today if we had thrown down the gauntlet at the beginning of his Presidency? By delaying a commitment to energy independence, we have made the goal even more difficult as we must now start with massive debt, and a devalued dollar.
Instead, we pour resources into ethanol with the unintended consequences of food shortages and burgeoning food prices. Sounds like a good plan, subsidize the farmers to buy seeds and fertilizer (at triple the cost vs. last year), squeeze out food crops and tax our water resources, buy oil for the energy needed to convert crops to ethanol (be sure to take on more debt to get that oil), and continue to watch fuel prices escalate in spite of increasing ethanol additives, while paying much more for all food staples (hoarding rice along the way).
Yesterday the Federal Reserve laughably said, “readings on core inflation have improved somewhat” (which excludes food and energy). Maybe it’s time we go back to the Consumer Price Index as a fairer measurement of inflation so government has to face the real facts.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Silda, You Are Us
If you’ve seen the two brief news conferences where New York Governor Eliot Spitzer first admitted his appalling indiscretions and then when he announced his resignation, the image of the sad, shocked face of his wife, Silda, who stood by her man during the news conference, is indelibly etched in your mind’s eye, as it is mine.
The microcosm of the event is bad enough, a man who overzealously campaigned against the very thing he indulged in, one who was born into privilege and pursued power behind the veil of championing the public good. Perhaps self-loathing led him to become the Elmer Gantry of public prosecutors. His downfall might evoke the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, but it fails on the measure of not evoking pity. He got his just due. The only pity we can feel is for his wife and his children.
But as a metaphor, Silda’s sad visage is emblematic of our own crisis, watching our country’s cultural and economic decline. We stand by, helpless, shocked, bewildered.
American industry and values were once the envy of the world. The “arrogance of power,” as the late Senator Fulbright put it (“the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission”), dragged us into Vietnam and now Iraq. We seem to be content following naïve or morally corrupt political leaders, damn future generations. Rack up debt, abandon the environment, and watch our educational system become one of the least effective of all developed nations. Our financial institutions are so unstable that Federal Reserve is now financing the excesses of this decade, with unknown consequences in the future.
Our energy policy is suicidal, a stake in the heart of the dollar, as we are content to massively export our dollars abroad to feed an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. Greater reliance on alternative energy, within our technological reach, remains elusive thanks to the lack of leadership (http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/12/politics-as-usual-where-is-leader.html). And we now share oil and basic material resources with rapidly developing emerging economies, and there is no world solidarity about how to deal with the consequences to the environment.
With no incumbents running for the presidency, we might have had a chance to begin to expunge short-term thinking from the political agenda. But the Democratic primaries have dissipated into political demagoguery, with race rising to the surface. Republican and Democratic candidates alike claim to have a “plan” to deal with the economy, education, the environment, Iraq, terrorism, but these “plans” seem like nothing more than sound bites to get elected.
To be effective, our new President needs to be inspirational, someone who knows how to unite disparate voices, reach across congressional isles, and mobilize the best minds to reverse our spiraling decline. One has to wonder where we would be if the popular vote had determined the Presidency in 2000. We now need to be concerned about the consequences if Democratic “superdelegates” ignore the Democratic primary popular vote.
The microcosm of the event is bad enough, a man who overzealously campaigned against the very thing he indulged in, one who was born into privilege and pursued power behind the veil of championing the public good. Perhaps self-loathing led him to become the Elmer Gantry of public prosecutors. His downfall might evoke the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, but it fails on the measure of not evoking pity. He got his just due. The only pity we can feel is for his wife and his children.
But as a metaphor, Silda’s sad visage is emblematic of our own crisis, watching our country’s cultural and economic decline. We stand by, helpless, shocked, bewildered.
American industry and values were once the envy of the world. The “arrogance of power,” as the late Senator Fulbright put it (“the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission”), dragged us into Vietnam and now Iraq. We seem to be content following naïve or morally corrupt political leaders, damn future generations. Rack up debt, abandon the environment, and watch our educational system become one of the least effective of all developed nations. Our financial institutions are so unstable that Federal Reserve is now financing the excesses of this decade, with unknown consequences in the future.
Our energy policy is suicidal, a stake in the heart of the dollar, as we are content to massively export our dollars abroad to feed an insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. Greater reliance on alternative energy, within our technological reach, remains elusive thanks to the lack of leadership (http://lacunaemusing.blogspot.com/2007/12/politics-as-usual-where-is-leader.html). And we now share oil and basic material resources with rapidly developing emerging economies, and there is no world solidarity about how to deal with the consequences to the environment.
With no incumbents running for the presidency, we might have had a chance to begin to expunge short-term thinking from the political agenda. But the Democratic primaries have dissipated into political demagoguery, with race rising to the surface. Republican and Democratic candidates alike claim to have a “plan” to deal with the economy, education, the environment, Iraq, terrorism, but these “plans” seem like nothing more than sound bites to get elected.
To be effective, our new President needs to be inspirational, someone who knows how to unite disparate voices, reach across congressional isles, and mobilize the best minds to reverse our spiraling decline. One has to wonder where we would be if the popular vote had determined the Presidency in 2000. We now need to be concerned about the consequences if Democratic “superdelegates” ignore the Democratic primary popular vote.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Politics as Usual – Where is a Leader?
It is that time of the year – political demagoguery to seek the presidential nomination. No wonder it is easy to become inured to politics. Not one candidate exhibits the qualities of leadership but, instead, each is busy tearing down the other, trying to appease every voter. Politics as usual. Leadership as usual.
Whatever you might think of John F. Kennedy, he knew how to articulate an objective and rally the nation behind his viewpoint, albeit he was also a crafty politician – perhaps one of the best in my lifetime.
The Cold War was at its peak when he took office and behind the guise of exploring space and shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet on May 25, 1961: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” It was a masterful stroke to rekindle American pride in the post Sputnik era and to establish a battleground in the Cold War (unfortunately, the other one being Viet Nam which was gradually being funded at the same time).
I remember how preposterous and unbelievable this objective seemed at the time, surely an impossible one to achieve. It was something more likely to come out of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne rather than the President of the United States. But I also remember sitting in an apartment on the upper west side of NYC with my future wife (Ann) on July 20, 1969 watching Neil Armstrong taking that “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
How does this relate to today’s Presidential race? Where is the candidate who says, “If you elect me I will dedicate our country to achieving energy independence within a decade.” And this must be the central message of our future leader as all other issues, and in particular the economy and the environment, stem from our addiction to oil.
I remember the GE science fairs that were given at NYC high schools in the 1950’s. The prototype of a solar power car was shown on stage and, then, when a spotlight was focused on its solar cells, the car slowly moved across the stage. It was proclaimed that this would be the car of the future in twenty-five years! The rudimentary technology existed even then, but as gas was 23 cents a gallon and we were able to produce the majority of our energy needs domestically, we did not need the backbone to commit our nation’s resources to alternative energy. And at that time we were unaware of the long-term effect of fossil fuels on our environment.
While the goal of putting a man on the moon with the decade sounded impossible in 1961, energy independence indeed will be impossible without committing to it as a national goal. Failing to achieve that will leave our nation hostage to foreign interests. We think we are fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq. That war is stealthy brewing closer to home as our dollar declines, foreign interests are buying up assets, and we continue to mortgage our future by borrowing.
Not only do we have to create better incentives for conservation, but we have to use, further perfect, and expand our proven nuclear, solar, fuel cell, hydrogen, and wind technologies not to mention the newer tidal and wave technologies. Honda has already produced a hydrogen car that gets 68 miles to the gallon, the only “waste” product being water http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/. Is anyone in Detroit or Washington listening?
If one of the presidential candidates ran solely on the platform of energy independence by 2017, he/she has my vote.
Whatever you might think of John F. Kennedy, he knew how to articulate an objective and rally the nation behind his viewpoint, albeit he was also a crafty politician – perhaps one of the best in my lifetime.
The Cold War was at its peak when he took office and behind the guise of exploring space and shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet on May 25, 1961: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” It was a masterful stroke to rekindle American pride in the post Sputnik era and to establish a battleground in the Cold War (unfortunately, the other one being Viet Nam which was gradually being funded at the same time).
I remember how preposterous and unbelievable this objective seemed at the time, surely an impossible one to achieve. It was something more likely to come out of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne rather than the President of the United States. But I also remember sitting in an apartment on the upper west side of NYC with my future wife (Ann) on July 20, 1969 watching Neil Armstrong taking that “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
How does this relate to today’s Presidential race? Where is the candidate who says, “If you elect me I will dedicate our country to achieving energy independence within a decade.” And this must be the central message of our future leader as all other issues, and in particular the economy and the environment, stem from our addiction to oil.
I remember the GE science fairs that were given at NYC high schools in the 1950’s. The prototype of a solar power car was shown on stage and, then, when a spotlight was focused on its solar cells, the car slowly moved across the stage. It was proclaimed that this would be the car of the future in twenty-five years! The rudimentary technology existed even then, but as gas was 23 cents a gallon and we were able to produce the majority of our energy needs domestically, we did not need the backbone to commit our nation’s resources to alternative energy. And at that time we were unaware of the long-term effect of fossil fuels on our environment.
While the goal of putting a man on the moon with the decade sounded impossible in 1961, energy independence indeed will be impossible without committing to it as a national goal. Failing to achieve that will leave our nation hostage to foreign interests. We think we are fighting the war on terrorism in Iraq. That war is stealthy brewing closer to home as our dollar declines, foreign interests are buying up assets, and we continue to mortgage our future by borrowing.
Not only do we have to create better incentives for conservation, but we have to use, further perfect, and expand our proven nuclear, solar, fuel cell, hydrogen, and wind technologies not to mention the newer tidal and wave technologies. Honda has already produced a hydrogen car that gets 68 miles to the gallon, the only “waste” product being water http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/. Is anyone in Detroit or Washington listening?
If one of the presidential candidates ran solely on the platform of energy independence by 2017, he/she has my vote.
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