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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4261
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 02:25 pm: | 
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The Sum of All Ears
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
Published: January 29, 2007
For those hoping for real action on global warming and energy policy, the State of the Union address was a downer. There had been hints and hopes that the speech would be a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, with President Bush turning conservationist. But it ended up being more of a Nixon-bombs-Cambodia moment.
Too bad: the rumors were tantalizing. Al Hubbard, the chairman of the National Economic Council, predicted “headlines above the fold that will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy independence.” British officials told the newspaper The Observer that Mr. Bush would “make a historic shift in his position on global warming.”
None of it happened. Mr. Bush acknowledged that climate change is a problem, but you missed it if you sneezed. He said something vague about fuel economy, but the White House fact sheet on energy makes it clear that there was even less there than met the ear.
The only real substance was Mr. Bush’s call for a huge increase in the supply of “alternative fuels.” Mainly that means using ethanol to replace gasoline. Unfortunately, that’s a really bad idea.
There is a place for ethanol in the world’s energy future — but that place is in the tropics. Brazil has managed to replace a lot of its gasoline consumption with ethanol. But Brazil’s ethanol comes from sugar cane.
In the United States, ethanol comes overwhelmingly from corn, a much less suitable raw material. In fact, corn is such a poor source of ethanol that researchers at the University of Minnesota estimate that converting the entire U.S. corn crop — the sum of all our ears — into ethanol would replace only 12 percent of our gasoline consumption.
Still, doesn’t every little bit help? Well, this little bit would come at a very high price compared with the obvious alternative — conservation. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that reducing gasoline consumption 10 percent through an increase in fuel economy standards would cost producers and consumers about $3.6 billion a year. Achieving the same result by expanding ethanol production would cost taxpayers at least $10 billion a year, based on the subsidies ethanol already receives — and probably much more, because expanding production would require higher subsidies.
What’s more, ethanol production has hidden costs. Even the Department of Energy, which is relatively optimistic, says that the net energy savings from replacing a gallon of gasoline with ethanol are only the equivalent of about a quarter of a gallon, because of the energy used to grow corn, transport it, run ethanol plants, and so on. And these energy inputs come almost entirely from fossil fuels, so it’s not clear whether promoting ethanol does anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
So why is ethanol, not conservation, the centerpiece of the administration’s energy policy? Actually, it’s not entirely Mr. Bush’s fault.
To be sure, at this point Mr. Bush’s people seem less concerned with devising good policy than with finding something, anything, for the president to talk about that doesn’t end with the letter “q.” And the malign influence of Dick “Sign of Personal Virtue” Cheney, who no doubt still sneers at conservation, continues to hang over everything.
But even after the Bushies are gone, bad energy policy ideas will have powerful constituencies, while good ideas won’t.
Subsidizing ethanol benefits two well-organized groups: corn growers and ethanol producers (especially the corporate giant Archer Daniels Midland). As a result, it’s bad policy with bipartisan support. For example, earlier this month legislation calling for a huge increase in ethanol use was introduced by five senators, of whom four, including presidential aspirants Barack Obama and Joseph Biden, were Democrats. In a recent town meeting in Iowa, Hillary Clinton managed to mention ethanol twice, according to The Politico.
Meanwhile, conservation doesn’t have anything like the same natural political mojo. Where’s the organized, powerful constituency for tougher fuel economy standards, a higher gasoline tax, or a cap-and-trade system on carbon dioxide emissions?
Can anything be done to promote good energy policy? Public education is a necessary first step, which is why Al Gore deserves all the praise he’s getting. It would also help to have a president who gets scientific advice from scientists, not oil company executives and novelists.
But there’s still a huge gap between what obviously should be done and what seems politically possible. And I don’t know how to close that gap.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8137
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 02:29 pm: |
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I stopped watching Bush's lamebrain speeches a LONG time ago. Because I got tired of seeing Dick(head) Cheney's lips move while Dumb Dubya spoke. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4263
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 02:42 pm: |
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You didn't miss anything. At one point I was actually counting the times Nancy Pelosi blinked her eyes. But then I went to sleep because I kept losing count.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8144
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 02:46 pm: |
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I just can't see why anyone who's NOT paid to do such bother to watch that Pinnochio speak those canned, trite lies.
Hell. I'd MUCH rather watch the most recent episode of 24 on TiVo. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3498
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 03:27 pm: |
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The first requirement of a leader is that he be able to speak well, it seems to me.
This guy is pathetic. I have actually started feeling sorry for him watching him stumble and mangle the language and looking at his interlocutor or into the camera like we ought to be getting it.
But he just didn't start doing this. He never could speak. The people who have been looking at this sorry spectacle and thinking that he was really saying something--man! That's who I am outdone about. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 6997
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 05:04 pm: |
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George Bush is an idiot savant. He has a single talent at which he excels, that talent being the stubborness that got America into the Catch 22 of Iraq, a quagmire from which it cannot extricate itself. Not funding the troops will leave them defenseless even as they become cannon fodder. And the greatest perk of Bush's stuborness is that the troops believe in what they're doing, that they are fighting to keep America free rather than fighting to save face George Bush's face. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1669
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 05:26 pm: |
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I had no intentions of watching it. Don't like the man and I don't agree with him about anything. Anyone who says he doesn't care what the world thinks, what Congress thinks, what our allies think, what the majority of Americans think and is currently turning his own political base against him, as long as Scotty (his dog) and wife agree with him about staying the course in Iraq, suffers from a severe debilitating megalomaniac complex.
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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4269
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 05:39 pm: |
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Hey, what do y'all think about the idea of using ethanol to replace gasoline? To me it seems like a start, at least it’ll get people to begin thinking about energy reduction, climate change and etcetera. |
Jackie
Regular Poster
Username: Jackie
Post Number: 391
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 05:45 pm: |
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Ntfs:"... as Scotty (his dog)..."
Leave Scotty out of it! LMAO !! |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8163
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 05:51 pm: |
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Tonya,
I've been (slowly) reading this book called Internal Combustion. In it, author Edwin Black argues the financial and environment costs associated with producing ethanol in the US are currently WORSE than those of producing petroleum. He does argue, however, we could get a much cleaner, less expensive ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane but US Oil and Ethanol lobbys would sooner dynamite the US Capitol Building - with Congress IN SESSION - before they allow that shyt to happen. |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4272
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 29, 2007 - 06:40 pm: |
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ABM, if Brazil is the answer, hey, why not? I think some of this stuff is related to the rise in serious illnesses like CANCER---so we need to do SOMETHING. And if enough people get behind it a practical solution, the lobbyists will no longer matter. |
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