Ruel and I with Steve and Sarah stamps, car-pooled up to see the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The movie as really interesting. It wasn't one of toughs balanced stories. It told one side of the story but I still think it is worth seeing. It was frustrating to see that right now we have the technology. In fact 1997 we had the technology. The fact is, we as a country do not want an electric car. a car that puts out no emotions is not a reason to by a car for most consumers.
Some people keep telling me "let the market dictate". I say we don't need a dictator. We need a balance of power. The market has many wonderful assets. But if it where not for some federal laws there would be no seat belts in cars, our cars would still get 12 miles to the gallon. this point was brought up in the movie. We have swung too far. it seems that there is no reigning in powerful corporations. In fact they get a tax break.
There is hope, but we need to make some long sighted desitions.
This is Jimmy Carter's 10 plinciples.
1. We can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.
2. Healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
3. We must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems —wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.
4. We must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.
5. We must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.
6. Reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.
He called #6 the cornerstone of the policy
7. Prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.
8. Government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.
9. We must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.
10. We must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.
5 comments:
This is essentially on point:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38644
The headline is: "98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others"
We have a gov't controlled by majority voting. In that sense, our gov't (in theory) shouln't be terribly different from the market "dictator." The difference is that we're all happy to impose things on everyone that, when made available to us as individuals (through the market), we won't expend our own resources on.
Think about it: If everyone in America that "believes" (or claims to believe) in reducing fuel consumption went out and bought a hybrid car in the next month, every manufacturer would be backlogged, demand would overwhelm supply to the point that every manufacturer in the world would have to offer something. The fact is, we don't. Most of the people with "Save the Earth" stickers end up sticking them to the back of a Subaru, even though a better option is available.
Bascically, I don't think the problem is in "the market" as much as it is in the market's participants.
Of course, the counter argument is that the manufacturers (and the gov't) are just lackeys to greater powers and that those greater powers will not allow increased supply of lower emission autos. That might be right, I guess, but I sort of have a hard time believing it.
Essentially, I think people like the idea of voting for imposition of something that they aren't willing to impose on themselves. We are the ultimate market failure. That Onion article is a little funny that way, even if not making the identical point.
yay jimmy!
Riggity, thank you so much for your input. You are right, we do have a choice not to buy something. We have some indirect way of changing what is sold to us as consumers. I apologies if I made it sound like it was all big business's fault. like you I blame the shortsighted American majority.
But, like an unethical congressman a corporation and its leaders should have reprocoutions. Maybe asking for responsible companies is like asking for an ethical politician? it just seems like my power as an American is being given away. I am a white middle class male and I feel like I am in the minority.
That's where I think you have a very interesting, and probably appropriate, point. People are starting to recognize that companies wield a lot of power. Because of that, they have social obligations that, maybe, the rest of us just don't have. Just like an elected official.
Sort of like saying, "okay, we chose you to be a valuable company in this country, now you have to live up to some standards that we've set." That's the price of doing business and they'll have to live with it if they want our business.
The electric car was killed by the Stonecutters; the same people who made Steve Gutenberg a star.
Allan
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