After being touted as a no-brainer, Keystone was shown to be an oversell and the third spill in days, show how unsafe these projects are. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/exxon-safety-medal-oil-spill_n_3021132.html Shouldn't the US be pursuing more clean energy sources?
you'll notice in one of those PR pictures in the story that they're power-washing the oil off the lawns and streets ... right into the storm drains. Nothing bad could happen there ...... They have done a fantastic job of keeping the press out, even got the state to stop the press from sending in helicopters to see the damage by declaring the area a no-fly-zone like it was the White House or something (someone snuck in and filmed a little bit including what looks like a little swamp/wetland completely coated with goop).
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/tar..._natural_disasters_waiting_to_happen_partner/ Keystone XL opponents often point out that Americans assume all the risk of tar sands pipelines, while oil companies will rake in all the profit from tar sands exports. But let’s be clear about the sort of risk we’re talking about. If the pipeline is built, it’s not a question of whether it will fail, but of when and where. We’re not risking a disaster. Disaster is certain. We just don’t know what the exact magnitude of the disaster will be. What if the Pegasus pipeline had failed under the Mississippi rather than in Mayflower? Here’s something we do know: The first Keystone XL disaster will be far worse than what happened in Mayflower, since TransCanada’s pipeline will pump ten times as much tar sands crude as the Pegasus does.
So Exxon asks government to enforce a no-fly zone and also engages in setting up news blackouts..If this was a banana republic, i'd be outraged..... This being the UNited States, there are just no words to describe this.... http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425286/april-09-2013/exxon-s-disaster-relief
Well liability is definitely a big reason on why I do not like the pipe lines (oil pollution being the other). But to be fair, if the governments and energy companies could agree to set up emergency funds to deal with this shit when it happens then I guess I would only have 1 reason to oppose it. Because sure the tax payer paying for most of the clean up may not be fair, but also it would not be if the Energy companies were to pay for 100% of the clean up (but that could be part of the contract). I mean States will collect taxes from the pipe lines, so will the Federal government, so there must also be a shared liability when shit goes wrong. I am not sure if 50%-50% (or 50-25-25 with the fed and states splitting part of the cost) is the right breakdown, but this shit that I sue you, you sue me and wait 10+ years before the funds become available is not a smart plan.
Thanks for the link. If you're going to quote newstories, though, you can create quotes by clicking on the quote icon and then pasting the information from the source.
Sure there are and you used them. The United States is a banana republic. It is a failed experiment that needs to be disbanded.
Doesn't having what ever forces are out there drive industry to be better and therefore, become more profitable?
A carbon tax could help. In exchange for ending subsidies to clean energy, it will cost less to the government (more to customers) and it would raise revenue.
If we factor the cleaning of those little oil spills into the price and remove their subsidies, I am pretty sure the prifitability gap with renewables would be minimal or inexistent.
Maybe I asked this wrong. How do you create a profitable retail market for clean energy? How do you limit the supply of sunshine and wind so that a supplier can make money? As I have said once before, the photovoltaic and the LED are inverses f the same technology and yet one has become 20x more efficient than the other over the last 10 years. Why? Because you can actually sell one and recoup your investment money.
Both get subsidies, so you would have to remove them from both for a fair comparison. Liability of spills, like I said before, we do take taxes from the oil companies (at least the states do) that minus the credits they get, does the cover the $$ value of cleaning the spills? Maybe maybe not. Is having Canada supply us with dirty oil better than having to be friendly with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia to get access to oil? maybe, maybe not. To me that is the biggest subsidy the oil industry gets, If we stopped using our military to defend dictators in oil countries and as Matt in the Hat would say stop killing brown people, oil prices would probably go way up, that would hurt global trade and reduce global GDP growth, but it would help clean energy be more competitive.
I don't think the issue is clean energy being competitive enough. The real issue is that full omplementation would make it TOO competitive, creating far more supply than demand and causing prices for per KWH to be too low to be profitable and able to recoup investors capital and pay salaries of well trained professionals at a level that they deserve. Not to mention all the other job losses that will take place in the dirty energy sector that cannot be replaced by similar payscale jobs for the same reason.
I think this is kind of a concern, but LED's don't last forever, nor do photovoltaic cells or windmills or whatever. Petroleum is cheap because the companies aren't on the hook for the side-affects. The companies and the taxpayers (all of us) don't have to pay a realistic amount upfront for the negative side-affects. We'd rather deal with the spills, the poor air quality, the flexibility, and everything else that goes with it instead of paying $10/gal. Clean energy comes with it the desire to account for all these things. I think the bigger problem is that when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, you can always burn more fuel, ramp up the fission, and let more water through the dam. It is going to take a lot more than simply shifting to cleaner alternatives in order to solve the problem. If nothing else, though, I'd love to get these oil-soaked entrenched mother********** a$$hole corporations out of power.
So you are OK with an artificial Market that sustain an inflated industry just because it pays "fair market value" to a few thousand people? And "omplementation" is not a word either....
It has nothing to do with what I am okay with. It's how the world works. You find a way to effectively resell clean energy and it you will have clean energy. Oh, and LEDs have a half life so technically they do last forever.
No, the world can be changed, you are just not OK with it. Revolutions happen one way or the other, otherwise we would be stuck with Monarchies and feudalism. You just have to look at what several countries are doing in respects of clean energy to see that it is possible, you might not like how they're doing it, but it shows it can be done.
I'm perfectly okay with clean energy. In fact, I would welcome it because then there would be no excuse against using the A19 lamp anymore. Our economy is based on scarcity, either real or fabricated. What you are talking about is a fundemental restructuring of our world economic system, which is a conversation I am willing to have. And that restructuring is not going to happen peacefully, I hope you are aware. But that is not the current conversation. One more thing, you call for higher efficacys along with a swap to all clean energy are diametrically opposed to each other practically. Think about it. You want to both limit demand and increase supply at the same time. A classical recipie for disaster.
The sun is scarce? Granted, our infrastructure is primarily set up for the use of oil and gas, but changing it to a more flexible model does not mean destroying the current grid, but updating it, something that you might be painfully aware living in the northeast. Investing on a more flexible diistribution model is perfectly doable as Germany has shown us, and it does not necessarily mean getting rid of fossil fuels, which can then be exploited in a safer, controlled way. Energy efficiency is also desirable in the form of improved construction and rational use. While it might make some people angry, especially big oil and the Middle East dictators, I fail to see where the violence plays in this equation.
So I'm watching the Masters and Exxon's one of the sponsors. Every commercial is "our students suck in math & science, we're doing our best to improve scores so they can get good jobs in the future." Yes, it's mightily fvcking annoying. But besides that, why would Exxon want aspiring scientists to learn that their industry ruins the environment and should be tossed in the dustbin one day? If they sent these dupes to Koch University of Questionable Climate Science I would get it. But I assume they're talking about real institutions.
Oil and mining interests almost entirely fund almost all major university programs that deal with their industry. Rio Tinto (Kennecott) and Chevron pretty much own the MINES programs in the 2 major state universities in Utah (UofU and USU) as well as BYU.