Put free enterprise to work on energy and climate

Credit: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Four Corners Power Plant near Fruitland, N.M., a 2,000-megawatt complex, at work in 2008.

By: BOB INGLIS | Times-Dispatch
Published: July 15, 2012 Updated: July 15, 2012 - 12:00 AM

Young Americans are watching their leaders hit the snooze button on energy and climate. For some of those leaders the snooze button turns off a sound they judge to be alarmism. For others the snooze button is a convenient way to delay difficult decisions. For young people delay is not an option.

That's why we've brought the Energy and Enterprise Initiative to George Mason University in Fairfax. That's why I spent time last month with American Legion Boys State delegations in Nevada, Oregon, Kentucky and North Carolina.

These rising leaders are not inclined to hit the snooze button. They're preparing to own the future, to engage in tough questions, to look for shades of gray and to avoid moralizing blame games.

That's why, in coal state Kentucky, it was good to start the discussion of the true costs of fossil fuels without recriminations. There's no reason to blame Kentucky coal families or anyone else for creating a fossil-fuel economy. No one is evil for having dug and burned coal.

Coal-fired electricity has built our country. Petroleum has powered our cars, planes, trains and ships with incredible energy density that has made us the most mobile and productive people in human history.

Now, though, we're beginning to see the true costs of those incumbent (fossil) fuels. We've shed American blood and treasure to protect the petroleum supply lines coming out of some very dangerous places, and we've funded state-sponsored terrorists with some of our gasoline purchases.

We allow 23,600 Americans to die prematurely each year from inhaling the soot from coal-fired electrical plants, and we've racked up 3 million lost work days annually due to lung impairments exacerbated by that soot. We've changed the chemistry of the air and oceans, which ? because of the physics of light and radiant heat ? exposes us to considerable climatic risks.

* * * * *

With no one imposing cost accountability on incumbent fuels, the challenger fuels ? wind , solar, nuclear, geothermal, biofuels, etc. ? lose to incumbent fuels every day of the week.

Challenger fuels often turn to the government for help, but it's hardly efficient to have the government picking winners and losers through clumsy mandates, fickle tax incentives and wasteful subsidies. The incumbent fuels get some subsidies, too, but mostly they're benefitted by a lack of accountability for their health, national security and climatic costs.

Whether we want to admit it or not, those costs are real, and, no surprise, we're already paying all of those costs ? just not at the meter and not at the pump. We pay, rather, through higher health insurance premiums and through taxes for Medicare and Medicaid. More and more, we'll be paying for the climatic costs through higher casualty insurance premiums.

Now that we know about these costs, what if we tried accountability and free enterprise? What if we attached all costs to all fuels and eliminated all subsidies for all fuels? What if we turned away from cap-and-tax schemes that grow government and turned toward a simple, no-growth-of-government tax swap?

By reducing taxes on something we want more of (income) and shifting the same amount of tax to something we want less of (pollution), we'd correct a market distortion, bring accountability to the marketplace and drive innovation.

* * * * *

Until all costs are on all fuels, the market distortion will keep free enterprise from delivering the fuels of the future. If those costs were attached, we'd prove a definition of "sustainability" that I first learned from Carlos Gutierrez, an engineer-entrepreneur in Spartanburg, S.C.

Gutierrez told me, "Sustainability means making a profit. If you can make a profit, it's sustainable. If you can't, it's not."

Making a profit means covering your costs. If you've got a competitor who can dump some of its costs onto the public, you'll be hard pressed to convince any but the altruistic to buy your more responsible, all-costs-in product.

Fossil fuels get to dump some of their costs onto the public. Some say that it would be too expensive to scrub the soot and other pollution out of the smoke and that the health, national security and climatic costs are negligible.

Let's show them that we know how to count costs, that our ideologies are open to science ? and that we believe in markets and accountability. Let's say to the fossil fuels (and to the challenger fuels), "Be accountable for all of your costs; let the markets work."

Accountability will put free enterprise to work on energy and climate. We just need to stop hitting the snooze button.

Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/commentary/2012/jul/15/tdcomm03-put-free-enterprise-to-work-on-energy-and-ar-2055969/

umf peter frampton elite eight stephon marbury the lion king suzanne collins cherry blossom festival