Let's use common sense here. Green energy expansion will be miniscule, and won't meet a major proportion of our needs for a long time. Is it a good idea to invest in it? I suppose so, but it is NOT a panacea. Green energy accounts for less than 2% of our energy today. As for possibility of expansion maybe 10% at most? No one has indicated that we could go much higher... I'm open to new ideas and new data. I hope for the answer to be higher. Enlighten me.
Obama's plan is to tax oil companies via a windfall energy tax. If any of you older people read my blog you'll probably remember that Congress already did that back in the late 70's and early to mid 80's. The plan backfired. Our domestic production dropped and we became even more dependent on foreign oil. The price of oil went down, but not because of this tax, more in spite of it. How? OPEC pumped more, plus other countries began to export oil. The oil companies pay a lot of their revenue in taxes already. Exxon Mobil pays 44% of their revenue to the government already. Exxon Mobil has invested more in finding more oil than they have made profits in the last ten years. Stock prices btw are effected by profits – the lower the profits the lower the stock value. Because 52% of you who have IRA’s 401k’s etc. have this in your portfolio your retirement or investments will take a hit. Now to get the profits up to where they were an oil company has to trim from somewhere else – guess where? One area is the search for more fuel/oil, aka discovery. That means less oil pumped in the future. Less oil pumped means, you guessed it higher prices at the pump. Congress let the oil windfall profits tax die in the mid 80's and essentially said: Bad idea - won't do that again. And now here we are again two decades later and what is the plan? Let me ask you this: if high food prices are a problem, do you think robbing your grocery store's cash register is the solution? If you said yes you should run as a Democrat for government. If you said no you shouldn't vote for Obama!
Now this tax money would be put into green energy projects. The problem with this is 0) remember this is the piggy government handling our tax dollars – think about the government’s record here! 1) The best way to save energy is to make buildings, factories, houses, and cars green. 2) He is opposed to nuclear energy. 3) The gains in green energy might not outweigh the cost of lower oil production and discovery. 4) He would be building inefficient projects - projects that cost millions of dollars that don't do a whole lot. For example even though he doesn't specify he could be talking about projects like rail lines. Yes we could/should be building rail lines for domestic use, but think about this. For all the human rail transportation Europe has, it only accounts for 5% of the human transportation there. More-so because of the government mandate that many railways be for passenger use only their freight has to go by highway. More than 75% of our freight goes by train. Their corresponding % is less than 25%! That means virtually 75% of their freight goes in trucks via the highway. Our highways are already overcrowded and need help badly – especially highways in densely urban areas. Remember that the less time we spend in traffic the more fuel efficient our cars are. Besides it’s not like most of us have a choice anyway. I wouldn’t drive more if there were less traffic. The incentive structure for most people without a choice won’t result in more driving or more GHG emitted.
So, the best ostensible way to combat global warming via transportation is that you would have to add rail lines - specifically for domestic passenger use only... maybe subways instead of rail lines? And any of these solutions would have to be in the dense urban areas. Anyway - this whole thing is going to be pretty complex, and it will have to be done ala carte or city by city. Big cross country rail lines are a waste of space, time, money and energy - no one will use them. The best rail systems are like the ones in the Washington to Boston (including philly, NYC, Baltimore) - metros, regional metro lines. They are the most efficient and effective. The problem is that is an intra-state issue for the most part and NOT an inter-state issue, and hence not a power of the federal government unless you make the argument that GHG pollution needs to be regulated by Congress and the only way to do that is by instituting metro rail lines. Or they could make this a voluntary program where if a city signs up and builds a plan it could be approved by congress and paid for... See how amazingly complex this could get? And does anyone else smell pig cooking?Worst thing: neither Obama nor McCain has a detailed comprehensive energy policy. It's sad.I got a book a week ago called Gusher of Lies. Let me read it. I need to explore sustainable energy. So far my best guess is nuclear and perhaps algae oil?
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