Posted by
Andrews on Friday, August 01, 2008 1:30:01 PM
I have recently seen the paired McCain and Obama advertisements. The McCain advertisement, quite rightly, portrays Obama as part fo the obstructionist Democrat controlled congress which has kept us from drilling. Obama, for his part, starts off with the Democrat's losing plan to paint McCain as a continuation of the Bush presidency. Obama then launches into his three part energy plan.
The plan basically amounts to this: Prosecute speculators, encourage energy efficiency, and create alternate energy sources. This is not an energy plan, it is the sign of a lack of a plan.
I have written endlessly on the fact that "speculators' are simpyl serving the purpose for politicians that Jews did for Hitler or "bourgeoisie" did for communists. They are a convenient scapegoat who have very little to do with the problem. Speculators follow trends, they don't create them, and any price changes they actually cause sever only to cushion price shocks, they do not "distort" the market. But I have written about this in "
Absurdities on Oil","
Economic Illiteracy", and "
Those Darn Speculators", so I will elt thos eolder essays speak for themselves. My point is that oil supplies will not increase one iota even if all speculation stopped tomorrow. So unless he is claiming ALL price increases are from speculation, this is a worthless approach, it will not produce any oil, and it will not create new oil for economic growth.
Nor will his second plan produce any new energy. Energy efficiency is all well and good, but any that is economical is already being practiced. And that is what many who promote "efficiency" ignore. We can obviously continue to make things more efficient, but we have to ask, is it worth making a change that saves $1 in energy if ti costs $1000. Changes that are economically sensible have already largely been made, those that are not have not. But do we want the government insisting we make changes more costly than the energy they save? And even if the answer is "yes", it still does not produce energy. Promoting energy efficiency as an energy plan is kind of like promoting living off your savings as a career.
The only part of his plan that would actually produce energy is his plan to produce "alternate energy sources". But here we run into a problem. As his far left base is incapable of embracing nuclear power, that almost always boils down to solar, or some solar variant such as wind. And,
as I pointed out before, going to an entirely solar plan is just not practical without seriously reducing our energy consumption dramatically. There are a few other options, such as geothermal, which may be viable in a few small areas, but the fact is, if an energy source were viable, we would be doing it already. The market drives people to accept novelties if they are financially viable. The problem is, today most alternative energy sources are just not viable.
So, that, in a nutshell is Obama's energy plan. He will hope that somehow a breakthrough occurs that makes currently non-viable source of energy will suddenly become viable, and until that happens, he will stage show trials of scapegoats to avoid taking the blame for his own inaction.
That's change you can believe in!