HRC Offers Energy/Climate Change Plan

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.

 

Wow. That's some kind of power bill Deez. The kind that would make me think twice about a bathroom light fixture with 5 bulbs.

 

For a house with no AC, it's outrageous. You might assume that perhaps the heating is electrical and gets pretty expensive to operate in the winter. Sorta but not really. Our heating system uses geothermal energy. It takes electricity to operate that system and to transfer the heat to the floor tiles (no radiators and obviously no vents with no central heat or AC), but the actual heat is not produced with electricity.

You mention light bulbs, and of course that's a separate racket. It cost me €56 (about $62) to change the bulbs in the dining room. Of course they claim the bulbs use very little energy (might be true, tough to verify that) and last for 8 years. Garbage. That was less than a year ago, and already two have gone out.

 

http://transportationblog.dallasnew...ign-flashed-colorful-slang-early-monday.html/
Hey Deez, you shoulda' told me you were in Dallas.

 

I wish I was that bold.

 

can I have a TLDR on Hillary's take? I really don't want to give her even a single click.

 

Does this make sense to anyone?

 

To Tom everything looks like a nail because he has a AGW hammer.

 

Steyer isn't right, but there's truth to what he says. When it comes to combating climate change (at least as the Left advocates), the poor and middle class are by far the biggest losers in the equation. A rich guy can afford to have his electric bill triple and to pay $8 per gallon for gasoline. For a poor or middle class family, that means a major financial hardship.

 

As Scott Adams says, it will be the low-skilled that will have to get paid to clean up the damage from rising oceans. Doing nothing is actually redistributive.

 

It costs more to try to reduce CO2 than to pay for any warming effects.

 

Step 1 - as coil, oil, and gas plants wear down, replace them with nuclear power.

 

Stat
That seems so logical which means it will never happen.
When was the last time a nuke plant was built.In the meantime the wind farms built 20 years AGO are having to gave the equipment replaced

 

But we're not doing that, even though we should be. In fact, we're shutting down and discouraging nuclear power plants except supposedly in Iran.

And the irony in Germany is that they're shutting down nuclear plants, but because the solar and wind are so unreliable, they've had to increase the use of lignite, which is some of the filthiest fuel they could use.

 

I still dont even understand exactly what he is stating
To me, it reads like gibberish

 

But the Left is now saying it is costing lives. They won't accept an economic model than the interesting concept Mchammer brought up of redistribution of wealth to those who will be asked to clean up the damage or an overall net savings using your trade-off.

Also, I don't see the African nations going along with having their hands tied concerning their fossil fuel resources just so the Europeans and American Liberals can pretend to be humanitarians AND GET WEALTHY FROM IT.

 

Namaste

 

If leftists truly believe in catastrophic global warming and hate capitalism to boot, why not do nothing and watch the world burn so that a socialist empire can arise from the ashes? Answer: they don’t believe in global warming either.

 

I always found this interesting. Iran's response to questions about its nuclear program was always that they only wanted such a program for nuclear power. And a bunch of Europeans who were dismantling their own nuclear power plants for environmental reasons were ok with this.

The should have stepped up and said, "wait, don't build nuclear power plants. They're bad for the environment. Instead, build these cool wind turbines and solar panels. We'll help you do it." But that issue was never raised by anyone. Where were the "green New Deal" people on this? Where were the Green Party crackpots in Europe on this?

I think we know the answer. I think most environmentalists in positions of power are hardcore leftists, so the cause of protecting the environment takes a very distant back seat to global wealth redistribution. That's why they care a lot more about the US and the EU adhering to onerous rules and regulations than Iran or China.

 

Anyone who advocates reducing CO2 emissions to prevent GCC but does not support nuclear power is not serious.

 

I'm just a simple man. It makes life easier but it does subject me to ridicule from the Left. Here is what I have come to understand from many years of jousting with hard-core (F*ck Y*u types) Liberals.

1) They are against nuclear power
2) They disbelieve the Abrahamic religions (magic man in the sky)
3) They hate misogynistic and homophobic people

So, obviously, they should support nuclear power in Iran and the emigration (legal or otherwise) to the United States of macho Catholic uneducated (i.e. not feminist/secular/atheist/green) men from Mexico and Old Testament (the Koran is basically the Old Testament) zealots from the Islamic world.

Simple right?

I've always thought that the Left would build the wall themselves if Mexico were Kentucky.

 

by,

Developing countries talk out of both sides of their mouths at this point. They want to receive investment dollars so they play along to a point. However, when they are asked specifically about their plans, they show that they will use the least expensive source.

As an example, the energy minister of India has stated that they have large reserves of coal and will build power plants to burn it for electricity. I think they long term plans to do that are explicit. Outside of Western Europe and the US no one is going to seriously consider reducing fossil fuel consumption. If you see France, no one will truly until renewables are at cost parity. At least that is how it should go.

 

If they thought those illegals would vote GOP, they would be putting land mines on the border.