I'll give HRC credit for finally offering a policy initiative on something, as superficial and non-specific as it is. At least she's sorta putting something on the table rather than just continuing her never-ending "listening" tour (which really just means Democratic partisans and media whores listening to her talk about herself and how great she is just because).
I rarely comment on climate change or energy policy. I'm not a climate change "denier" (a blatantly loaded term), nor is climate change my religion like it seems to be for others. I'm a climate change agnostic. I don't know how much it's changing, how fast, or what's causing it. One thing I do know is that it's a multi-trillion dollar issue that's literally a global game changer. Furthermore, there isn't a natural market for climate research, which means that every expert on the issue is getting paid by somebody with a big policy agenda - fossil fuel interests, green energy interests, governments, etc. Accordingly, I'm not going to put a lot of stock in anything that anyone says on the issue. I'll pretty much always be an agnostic on the issue. However, I'm generally pro-alternative energy research for reasons that have nothing to do with climate change. Fossil fuels are a finite resource, so it makes sense to be as non-reliant on them as reasonably possible. It also helps not to be dependent on foreign nations for energy resources, especially unstable and dangerous nations.
Nevertheless, one thing I didn't hear about in HRC's plan and rarely hear discussed or even asked about is the costs associated with adopting a green energy agenda. I think a lot of people assume that there isn't a downside or that it's a minor downside that won't hurt them very much. That's probably not true. (It's interesting. The Left talks a lot about the "free health care" in Europe, but I don't hear them talk much about energy costs.)
Here's my experience. Germany aggressively pushes green energy (especially solar and wind). Solar panels (including on the roof of my house) and windmills are everywhere, and the country relies significantly on them. In Texas, I paid about 10 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. Here, I pay €.29 ($.32) per kilowatt hour. (That's not counting the fees and taxes, which are pretty onerous, but I'll ignore those for this discussion since we don't know what those would look like in the US.) Each month I pay more than double the worst electric bill I ever got in the US, and though my house is pretty large (about 3,700 sq. feet), it's not air conditioned, has exclusively high-energy efficiency appliances, and only two adults and one baby live in the house.
So if you think the environmental situation is dire enough to warrant radical and immediate action, then go for it. However, before people start jumping on that bandwagon, they need to know what's coming, at least if we follow Europe's model. It's not going to be cheap. It's going to cost you and not just a little bit. Even if you make a decent living, you're going to feel the pain. If you're a middle class family in the South (and therefore need consistent AC usage), be prepared for your electric bill to look more like a mortgage payment than just an unusually high cable or cell phone bill. Just my two cents based on experience.
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Like x 2
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Last edited: Jul 27, 2015