Better Without A National Energy Policy Than With One.

Getting Sold a Bad National Energy Policy? Suddenly Everyone is an Expert on Renewable Energy Because the Marketing Hype is On. Think Before You Fall Prey to the Orchestrated Fad Lex Loeb Contributor Network . Externalities in cost benefit analysis models are the unexpected economic consequences and costs of projects not factored in the original planning equations. It is questionable if the dire state of pollution in china is actually an externallity or just a known cost that seemed manageable from the beginning. Ending urban poverty in China with rapid free market industrialization definitely accomplished that goal but also resulted in worse pollution than the country had started with. Pollution prior to the free market expansion was tolerated in much the same degree as today in the trade off for economic development. Environmentalists are still fond of saying that the increase in pollution is an externallity in the Utopian planning department mind set. The same people who have this point of view are responsible for the revolutionary national energy planning ideas that have become the subject of major national and international hype in the quest to make the idea of "going green" the common sense of the era. It may be common sense of error because of the very sort of externalities that are see in existing energy and industrial development. A few facts about what they are actually proposing as "Green" should have a lot more people wondering exactly what their true intentions are. The biggest smartest industrial investors in the country are lining up their ducks at this very moment to attempt to make a fortune off the strange new alternative energy program . A careful view of how they are preparing shows that you the consumer are going to have to buy your energy from large consolidated monopolies where prices are set high and are not too competitive. You might think that the extra costs are worthwhile because you have been convinced that otherwise the livability of the earth will expire. Having monopolies controlled by oligarchs definitely would be a major externality as that situation might just cut your standard of living. Replacing OPEC with a nationally ordained cartel is also a definite "externality." The energy policy we already know is coming is not about alternatives that compete but about alternatives that have no alternatives. The reason for this is that people by themselves are deemed to be incapable of making their own decisions on the moral and environmental dangers of energy consumption. The central part of the plan is that you already have too many choices. That probably means vastly higher prices. This is why the rail roads are being bought up by key monopolists as well as natural resources. Long distance competition for railroads from the trucking industry will be over. Railroads are natural monopolies and very few areas of the country are served by competing lines. The natural gas industry is also a sure thing monopoly because of the nature of pipelines being like railroads. Natural gas is in play right now. Understanding how natural gas gets out of the evil carbon category is not making all that much sense because even if clean burning it does produce carbon byproducts or if used in a fuel cell it puts water vapor in the atmosphere which is a bigger "global warming gas" than co2 is. I can imagine the humidity going up in Los Angeles might result in major local climate change that might get classified as an unwanted externality? All that water vapor in the LA basin might result in more Rain in Arizona for all we know. Other externalities is just how ugly wind farms are. They also kill birds and other animals in massive numbers over time, maybe not as many as windows do. Wind farms alter the landscape in a way that makes smoke stacks hated by environmentalists look quint by comparison. Solar farms can even be uglier. The surface area of the earth required to make solar energy a viable alternative to our present major energy sources means seeing them as far as the eye can see in some places. replacing all the red tile roof tops in Santa Barbara , California with solar panels may also not be the most exciting externality. Solar and wind power farms need to be located as close as possible to major metropolitan areas because the energy that they put on the power grid happens to do what all electricity does run into resistance so that power is wasted over long distances as heat radiation and a magnetic field. Other geniuses want to build tidal power plants and wind turbines as far as the eye can see on our coastlines. These are the same people who would never allow oil drilling platforms to be positioned in the same places. One of the worst externalities of energy alternatives is decidedly ethanol in how it's ramping of production caused the price of bread and rice world wide to double in the span of a few months. Bio-fuels from spent Greece traps in fast food restaurants becomes a big externality if the population of cars that run on it goes up fast enough that there are French fry oil shortages causing the prices to become astronomical. The government will have to strictly limit licenses to drive cars that use these waste bio fuels because there cannot be enough to go around once demand expands as cars that use it multiply. Soon the industry will have to be using vegetable oils that have not been used for deep frying first before becoming a waste product just to meat demand. The cost of French fries will go up as the externality? Behind the scenes the whole energy plan has new industrial production lines in factories and of course these will ultimately create pollution we might not realize initially. Global warming has not yet been proved sufficiently that it is absolutely the known cause of the present warming trend. Everyone in the field of climate change tells us that we need to act just in case the theory is right otherwise we will miss our chance even if it proves wrong. If the present warming trend just turns out to be a part of the solar cycle and has nothing to do with industrial gases than the whole plan will turn out to be a worse fiasco than the theory that Iraq had WMDs. Already there have been some major defections from the Al Gore consensus of global warming scientific lobby because scientists are prone to doubt unlike politicians. The worst of the externalities for the alternative energy policy game that has already started is that it may actually result in the use of more gas , coal and oil than ever before. This can happen because the third world and transitional third world countries like china may not opt in to the green plans that other countries do. China has become a factory for the world. That means they burn oil and coal for us as the end consumers of much of what is produced there. Figures that show that china is in competition with the US for world oil supplies does not necessarily take into account that much of that oil is burned for US companies that are sourcing out their industries to China. Already we have seen that externality. The accounts balancing that shows china in competition for oil is a bit absurd if it happens to be for offshore domestic production. Going nuclear may or may not prove cost effective with out breeder reactors.. The environmentalists cite the externalities there as radioactive contamination but the real externality is that the production of nuclear energy is not necessarily the most competitive in price. Base uranium supplies are limited . The technology has improved but it might improve a lot more rendering investments today totally wasteful when a better idea would have been to burn gas, coal and oil till the investment prospects of the technology really improved to make it economically feasible. Getting excited by the big policy talk? Don't. Get a little skeptical and ask the big wigs pumping up the plan to you a lot more information. Make sure they are completely liable for the externalities that may result expected and unexpected so that the cost go to their discredit their account s and not to yours. .