The obvious energy policy not being considered

While we throw money here and there at various forms of both alternate and conventional sources of energy, we are not developing a sensible and sustainable national energy policy because the best and most obvious of policies is not favored by corporate America and our elected officials.

So what is this best and most obvious energy policy?

Simply put, it is this: we should let the free market do its thing and charge the full costs associated with the use all energy sources. That’s it. Sounds simple, right? And it’s also the American way, right? So where’s the hang up? The hang up is that the full cost of all energy schemes must include the costs associated with waste disposal. Well, of course, you might say — after all, this is a well-known component of nuclear energy costs, right? So again, where is the hang-up?

The hang-up is that the users of fossil fuels have enjoyed free use of the Earth’s atmosphere as a garbage dump for the disposal of carbon dioxide (CO2) for more than a century and they do not want to start paying for that service now. The only defense they have for their position is to deny the now exceedingly well-established science behind man-caused global warming. Unfortunately, It is clear from the position statements on climate change that have been put out by all of the USA’s professional scientific organizations that the costs of addressing and adjustment to our ever-increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 will be enormous.

Therefore, it is both fair and necessary to create a level playing field for all means of energy production by charging all energy providers, including those in the fossil fuel businesses, the total cost of their product’s use.

Another important aspect of this plan is that 100 percent of the proceeds thereby collected from the carbon fees should be returned to the public on a per capita basis — in order to encourage the public to adopt less CO2-emitting lifestyles. This public distribution could be easily done via our existing IRS system. For example, after a few years into this plan, a family of four might be receiving a tax credit of about $9,000 per year. That family would be free to use that tax credit in any manner they wished. They could use it to help purchase the then more expensive fossil fuels, if they wished, or they could try harder than they previously had to meet their energy needs in other ways. Those other ways would be made increasingly attractive to them by a free market system in which the suppliers of gas, oil and coal would no longer be given free use of our atmosphere for waste disposal. In this way, public habits would be transformed within a couple of decades. (Note that this is exactly why the producers of fossil fuels are terrified by the spread of this idea!)

With our present system, our government gives loans and grants to various alternate energy schemes, such as in the recent case of Solyndra, and then wishes them luck in their ensuing competition against untaxed suppliers of gas, oil, and coal which, by the way, receive even greater assistance from our government. Not surprisingly, most of these alternate energy schemes then fail after their government support is pulled. With an appropriate waste disposal fee added to all fossil fuel use, the best of our energy entrepreneurs could then rise to the top without government subsidies and we would thereby witness the development of self-sustaining energy industries.

Another advantage of this plan (and another reason why the fossil fuel industries hate it) is its simplicity. The only task to be performed by our government would be that of annually setting the carbon fee. Presently, we play an impossibly complex shell game in Washington, D.C., in which only the exceedingly dedicated and exceedingly wealthy can participate (i.e., the fossil fuel lobbyists). While I would like to think that our elected officials would also welcome the simpler system being proposed here, I also fear that far too many of them have grown to like the personal power they wield in their high stakes games with the fossil-fuel lobbyists. Apparently, our elected officials need to hear much more than they presently do from public about the more sensible and transparent plan being advocated here.

The global warming problem must also be addressed on a global basis, of course, and this plan provides an excellent means of doing that — via the imposition of “carbon tariffs” on all goods imported into the USA for which a carbon fee was not paid in the country of origin. With such tariffs, other countries would quickly begin to charge similar carbon fees internally so that their own governments would collect those fees instead of ours.

Note also that our elected officials have been clearly and repeatedly informed of this plan — even though they might not have shared it with you. For example, a formal presentation of this plan, called Carbon Fee with 100 Percent Dividend, was provided on Feb. 25, 2009, before the House Ways and Means Committee by Dr. James Hansen, a leading climate-change scientist. The full text of his presentation can be seen at

 www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090226_WaysAndMeans.pdf

So why is this energy plan not embraced and endorsed by far more of our political leaders and by none of our Montana Democrats? If you put that question to any of them, I suspect that the answer you might receive is simply this: “The Carbon Fee and 100 Percent Dividend Plan has no chance of being politically acceptable in the U.S. Congress,” period. That’s it (you will recall that this is also what our Sen. Baucus told us about the “single payer” public option for medical care about two years ago). The logic behind this anemic response is that big changes in existing business-as-usual practices are not likely to see the light of day in Washington, D.C., or Montana because, by definition, existing business-as-usual systems are the ones that are most firmly entrenched and they control our congressmen.

Therefore, until there is no longer any merit to self-fulfilling prophecies concerning the forces of “business as usual,” such as that attributed to Sen. Baucus above, badly needed changes will not be given a chance by either party. Instead, our elected officials are far more likely to continue throwing money at selected green energy suppliers in order give the public the impression they are doing something about the climate change problem — while simultaneously helping the fossil-fuel industries find and develop still more sources of gas, oil and coal.

To summarize, Will Rogers’ legendary observation, “we have the best Congress money can buy,” is far more sobering today because of the unprecedented dimensions of the climate-change problem. So while chances for change don’t look so good at the moment, I hope I have clearly explained here the barriers that must be overcome before we finally do adopt the best and obvious energy policy.

Eric Grimsrud, of Kalispell, is a retired atmospheric scientist.