the duchy of hetkettle trophish

i guess i guess i support taxing pollution instead of payroll. i still want to regulate oil prices to prevent profitable oil sands development etc. ok no. i hate those fuckers. i’m down with making big institutions fess up to the ecological truths through resource pricing — preferably just for them — we’ll find out if they need to despoil and rob to live — should be fun for all. but most of them will take any further crazy revenues and buy up the new energy facilities.

that’s not right. as stupid as i know that sounds, letting the oil producers and distributors turn an unregulated toxin into perpetual ownership of renewable energy is about as broken as you get without crossing into the destabilization of the biosphere. fortunately nationalizing corporate renewable sources will be easier.

the facilities will be right over there.

i’d say “municipalizing” but cities tend to pay market price where states consult the blue book of aesthetics. i’d rather think of this as retroactive windfall profits taxation.

we’ve more than earned it, given how much public property and equity’s been generously donated to the bubbly cause, by the many ways.

“clean” and “renewable” are out in the public now, running around, but “alternative energy” still comes up sometimes and it should be put away. “the alternative” to “alternative” energy is too horrible to contemplate. so fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas, too — are a deadly habit our hired hands refuse to break and clean energy is the way forward.

like that, is “energy policy.” like always you’re free to disagree but to me energy policy is what you read about in a news magazine. changes in finance, changes in sourcing, new pipes, future resource development, new agreements. war.

energy policy = get more.

the washington people seem to have a problem, putting together all their packages, in understanding what side of that equation needs to be adjusted. their debates are focused on defining the parameters of a “get more with less” idea. how much less. when much less. why much less. but the reality is,

get rid of oil = get more.

in that same vein, the whole world looks to coal to provide electricity and heat to build the metal-girded future people seem to want. they describe it, so:

coal = bottomless money.

and then well, the environmentalists, and the doctors, and the fisherpeople, and the public water experts, and then you start seeing the bottom of the well, taking out this payment and that payment, so it’s “money,” still deep, maybe, but less than bottomless, instead of

renewable energy = endless money.

i mean, i know we’ve dumped thousands of times more energy into the system in this splurge of machinery than the planet’s comfortable with absorbing, and that’s a bigger problem now than it was when bucky fuller called it a problem a half century ago, and we’re gonna pay. clearly.

how much we pay will depend on how fast we learn the new math.

so i called the earth policy institute yesterday and today jonathan dorn called me back and told me exactly how i was reading the plan-bee tables wrong. maybe you’ll be as curious as i was to learn more of this “reality” people talk about!

remember yesterday…?

in fact, in fact, i’ll tell you what i’d do.

i’d have every government in the world declare oil, coal, and natural gas as hazmats. call them a strictly-regulated commodity whose waste we have no room for and fix the price … preventing any further investment in developing alternative fossil sources or licking dry wells with fresh water or any other “i have no clue about the state of the world” bullshit that people are doing … and then i would tag a remediation price on using that energy that would really spur change — by capturing the majority of the current value of the energy — and kicking it over to a fund for building the clean’lectricity superhighway … and all the safe generation and demand reduction we can fit — and then…

and how i griped about timelines contracting? what’s today — one day later?

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll. [via]

The survey also reveals that most Britons believe “green” taxes on 4×4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.…

“People do get cynical unless they see benefits,” [Mike Childs, the head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth] said. “The Government is playing a dangerous game. They are using climate change to identify potential new taxes and revenues but the public aren’t seeing anything in return. The public aren’t being helped to go green. The Government could put a windfall tax on the big oil companies and use that money to insulate homes or introduce a feed-in tariff to pay people to produce renewable energy.”

how much longer do we let this market charade go on?

where’s the service it’s delivering? i don’t see it.

ps. don’t need a new agreement. need a strategy.

this is bigger than paper or plastic. while being almost exactly the same. cool.

the question as i understand it is like this.

a large rollout of wind needs a very smart and well-planned super-grid on which to operate, and widely dispersed farms of good size, to smooth the many various breezes into a reliable flow of electricity. tame them.

but the process of planning such a grid would probably be taken completely over by existing producers looking for new ways to move their dirty juice. wind would be an afterthought.

but without the smoothing, engineers laugh at using wind for much, extending the dependence on fossil fuels.

but with the smoothing, large farms would be forced through and jealously controlled by large investors seeking to dominate the market while the tax incentives are hot — localities would find stiff opposition to using existing law to control their own supply, let alone changing the law to make it possible.

but without, we are screwed.

but with, we could be robbed. again.

i still say draw up the plans; and in those plans expect, encourage, facilitate, prefer, and protect local investment.