I’m going to
post once more about the climate debate in an entertaining manner, then, since
school will be starting soon and a lot
of summer is behind us… it’s time to get more serious. My next post will be an
update on my effort to determine if MidAmerican is paying the correct amount of
property taxes at their wind project in Pocahontas County. The quick answer is that
I don’t think they are, but I’ll get into those details next time. I hope all
the counties where MEC is planning wind projects thoroughly investigate this.
Let’s see… distributed
generation and the great climate debate - part 3. If you have a sense of humor,
a thick skin, and are strong of heart, proceed… otherwise… you have been warned.
It seems
that climate hawks and conservatives are totally unwilling to talk to each
other about advancing climate policy that will help us, and the next generation
more importantly. Liberals advocate for lifestyle changes, carbon taxes, and
rapid deployment of renewables. The downfall, I think, is that they are content
to allow most of the public passively watch this transition instead of
encouraging widespread ownership of renewables.
I’ve been to more than one conference where the conversations sounded a
lot like this. Remember,
thick skins everyone. The full episode of that clip is here.
For the record, I drive a hybrid, but
since it won’t do all the jobs at the farm, a gas guzzler still resides at the
acreage as well.
Conservatives
have been just as disappointing to me. I tried to find a conservative clip in
order to stay “fair and balanced”. So
far, nothing has surfaced. Feel free to send something my way. A lot of conservatives seem to be here.
Some of them seem to be here.
David
Roberts seems to think that conservatives have always
been fated to oppose climate change policy. His has several recent
thoughtful posts on this. I always enjoy reading his posts, but it seems to me
that if conservatives had no choice but opposing climate policy, climate hawks
seem to be fated to only try and change them, instead of advocating for policy that
has beat this stalemate in other countries.
Chris Nelder
wrote a very thoughtful piece about peoples tribal tendancies- Storytelling
our energy future – a fun quote - “We believe people that we like and trust,
and this is the basis of most of our beliefs. We don’t feel the same degree of
belief with people we don’t like and trust, because it’s not emotionally and
associatively compatible.” Chris
tells a personal story about how he felt both tribes wanted nothing to do with
him. Take the middle position at your own risk. I found another post by Chris that
discusses why he thinks current climate policy efforts have failed and why he’s
ready to try “climate
judo”, a national feed in tariff (FiT) instead. Another quote - “A national FiT would take essentially the opposite approach to carbon
mitigation than has been tried to date. Carbon taxes are all stick, while a FiT
is all carrot. The benefits of this approach should be obvious.
It would create an alternative supply
to fossil fuels first. It would not raise fears about being left in the dark.
As the price of renewable power falls, it would naturally force coal and
natural gas off the grid. Incumbents would find themselves losing creditworthiness
as their business models are disrupted, as is already happening in Europe.
That’s climate judo! “
Chris lays
out a scenario where this could be done administratively instead of trying to
get our dysfunctional senate and house to act. I’m definitely ready for a
change to the current efforts and I like it, but unfortunately I think too many
of us are stuck in zero
sum game to be ready to talk about it yet. I’m hoping we don’t stay there.
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