Like Bill Clinton's economic/tax proposal in 1993, the carbon cap and trade legislation that Rep. Henry Waxman of California managed to get through the House of Representatives is being attacked as an economy killer. First, since our economy is currently in a vegetative state, I'm not sure how a measure designed to encourage innovation and investment in new technology, as well as provide liquidity to companies that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by trading their permits to companies that are less efficient is somehow damaging to the economy. I suppose its all those college courses I took at the same university; unlike Sarah Palin, I didn't diversify my education experience enough or something.
At the heart of the matter, however, is this. While hardly a cure-all for our environmental woes, this is a good first step toward changing the physical infrastructure of the manufacturing and energy sectors of the economy. I heard today that even Exxon-Mobil, Global Warming Denier No. 1 and still a profitable corporate giant even in our difficult times, is investing in renwable bio-fuels techonology in a big way because even they recognize oil reserves are running out. Rather than get left behind, they are using their enormous financial and market power to invest in new, what can only be called green technology, not because the Board of Directors is filled with tree-huggers, but because they want to survive in the long run.
For all those folks screeching about the end of the American economy as we know it I can only say, "You're right." Our entire economic superstructure is based on petroleum. We use it to produce the energy to run our factories, homes, automobiles. We use it to produce products we use all the time, from plastic shopping bags to the dashboards of automobiles. Yet, the reserves are running out. If we sit around and insist that we cannot change because change will only hurt us economically, my retort is a simple one - if we don't change, the result will be even more catastrophic. Since all these so-called conservatives (who aren't "conservative" in the Edmund Burke/John Adams/Russell Kirk fashion at all, but reactionaries and proto-fascists) are so obsessed with the whole "U.S.A! We're Number 1!" business, I should point out that not restructuring our economy in a way that is less dependent on carbon-based fuels (including not just petroleum but coal as well) will leave us far behind the curve as other industrialized nations begin encouraging their corporate and manufacturing entities to begin the process of switching to a post-carbon future.
I realize this may be difficult to grasp. Every time the subject comes up, you hear, "But there's oil in Alaska! Under the Rockies! Drill!" The reason these fields have not been utilized before now is not some vast conspiracy by environmentalists and liberals burrowed deep in the bureaucracy. Rather, Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and other companies aren't exactly beating each other up to get contacts for drilling in these and other places for sound economic reasons. The cost of extracting oil, whether from Alaska's north slope, from under the Rocky Mountains, or further out on the Continental Shelf in the oceans, is the cost is prohibitive compared to the potential financial gain. The fact that even during the Bush years, government incentives for companies willing to drill in northern Alaska (just a form of corporate welfare) were needed to get companies to accept the idea should tell anyone paying attention that this isn't a good idea for more reasons than just caribou migration.
The reality is that our grandchildren will not live in a petroleum-based economy 100 years from now. Even if the US does nothing to encourage altering our dependence on fossil fuels, other nations will, and fifteen or twenty years down the line, we will be hurting, left behind, and it may be too late to make up the difference in the long run. You want to be competitive in a decade? Then, encourage everything from cleaner industrial physical plant to the development of new technologies!
I realize that change, especially the kind of change discussed whenever the issue of the roots of our economy comes up, is kind of scary. Yes, there will be a shake-up of our economy. The alternative, however, is a kind of relatively quick demise of the US to Third World status.
If that happens, at least we will know who to blame.
Virtual Tin Cup
