Marenta wrote:There is no right or wrong way, Brian. It's all trial and error, even though we have a decent idea of the outcome given a certain set of circumstances.
Personally, I don't want to shxt in my living area. I like clean energy (Nuclear, my fave!) but there are drawbacks to everything.
Solar: The chemicals used to make the panels are so toxic to humans and the environment, it requires retarded amounts of controls to dispose of it properly.
Wind: The wind turbines screw with bird flight paths, and they also break up the landscape. While these are minor to most people, they do have an impact.. the whole butterfly wing flutter theory.
Natural Gas: It's a great way to produce power, however it requires so much piping and infrastructure to build, it is almost cost prohibitive.
Coal: Coal IS abundant and cheap. But, after living next to one of the largest coal power plants in the nation, I can reasonably say that coal is disgusting.
Nuclear: People are terrified of it, and rightfully so. While it is one of the most controlled and watchdogged sectors in power, it still has that "Oh, sh1t!" factor with it. Plus, we don't allow American companies to refine the spent fuel, like Canada or Russia. If we did allow the refinement of spent fuel, biomedical equipment and medicines would drop in price dramatically.
They all have their drawbacks. They all have their promises. Expanding ALL power is a win. The best solution, in my opinion, is to build on the infrastructure of the nation. Our power lines, water pipes, pumping stations, phone lines, you name it.. they're all dilapitated and in serious need of an upgrade in newer materials. The problem with this is that the companies have to foot the bill for these changes, even though it's something that supports the nation and probably should be under the auspices of the federal government and not private industry.
Here's the problem with what you just said.
People come first. Period dot. There IS a right way. If the regulation is going to hurt hundreds of thousands of people, you don't implement it. If you're going to regulate something that will impact the lives of people, part of your process during the regulations design has to take into account how you're going to fix any problems you create with said regulation. Otherwise YOU DON'T REGULATE. This wasn't done. So how do we fix it right now? Easy, reset the regs to pre-BO levels. Consider your "trial and error" phase complete and the trial was a failure. When something is has failed, you fix it. You don't press on with the failed policy out of spite. You hit the f*** reset button and put people back to work. When there is a method to reduce carbon emissions from coal burning or an alternative source that will supply jobs to all those who will be immediately effected, THEN implement new regulation. You don't just regulate something without factoring impact. That's how you fail and that's what we did.
Trial and error can't be done with peoples lives, especially on a scale that impacts such a large number of people. It's not like we didn't know we were in the middle of a recession. Our job losses were in full swing before they wrote these damn regulations. No one stopped for a damn second to think about the impact this was going to have on the people. It's criminal.
People are here to stay. Unfortunately we're consumers. That is never going to change. We reproduce and we consume. Eventually we'll run out of things to consume, that's just fact. We haven't developed the technology yet to change this.
All of these alternative energies you speak of simply don't produce enough power to off set anything. Accept nuclear. I'm a fan of Nuclear, always have been. But that's not here nor there. We don't have these nuclear plants right now, nor will we any time soon. We also don't have any money to build them. So how about we fix the current problem with jobs and help these people right now? How can we take away the hurt from hundreds of thousands of people RIGHT NOW? Flip the switch back to coal until the day comes where we can honestly say we have some good idea's to offset the impact of stepping away from it. Or clean it...whatever. Point is, we can put people back to work right now without spending a dime. Which brings me to my next problem with your statement.
Investing in the infrastructure is a great idea. To bad we're broke. Without our population working the Gov doesn't have enough revenue to fix anything. Picture the dog chasing it's tail.
Jobs are the key to digging ourselves out of this mess. Without jobs we as a people are failing and will not recover. No amount of Gov spending is going to fix it. We over regulate everything, from lemonade stands to coal production, the Gov's heavy hands are hurting people, not helping them.
So you'll have to excuse me if I don't agree with you about having a right or wrong way to do things. The right way is crystal clear to me.
think of car, any car will do, even an electric POS if that's how you roll. Now drive that car from Maine to Florida. When you get to Florida, take a nice clean micro fiber cloth and wipe down one quarter of the the left front wheel. Done! Yay! Because that's how much we're effecting the global output of pollution by killing coal.