From Ernest Moniz’s written testimony for today’s House hearing on Obama’s climate change plan:
I have no doubt that transforming our energy economy will be a challenge. And new technology will be key. We will need our smartest scientists, our brightest engineers, and visionary policy makers to get this done.
Who told this guy that we wanted him to “Transform our energy economy?”
No, simulations show that it doesn’t respond well to centralized oversight, regulation, taxation, and target mandates. Additionally, a poll of over 1000 UofC Berkley students indicates Americans are highly opposed to it. We need something more modern, appropriate to the turn of the century or Fin de Siècle as it were.
I once read about something called free-market capitalism. Maybe that’s a new technology that can transform the energy economy.
The ongoing “progressive” effort to run the energy sectors on unicorn doots and pixie dust.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Man_sitting_on_a_dead_horse_%281876_-_1884%29.jpg
The real issue with governmental interference is that they tend to pick one pony and run with it. Pouring subsidies into one technology excludes other, potentially more successfull technologies. Meanwhile, what has historically driven mankinds great technological jumps has always been periods of plenty. Great minds need food too, and they don’t spend time tinkering in the garage whne they have to work two jobs to keep the lights on. Maximum utilization of the resources we currently know is more likely to spawn the era of invention we need to find the future technological marvels we’re hoping for. Study the history of man’s greatest inventions and you’ll find private individuals with open access to cheap resources are who creat the future, not government agencies operating in an environment of regulation and rationing.
Limits on growth in production of fossil fuels come from government. So we desperately need to invent something else. Better to place limits on government.
do not let ideology blind you to reality. Limits on growth in production of fossil fuels currently represent hard limits on economic growth worldwide. This basic physical fact gets filtered through politics and finance, which confuses the issue. The world desperately needs new sources of energy which are commercially viable. Without them, you will be living in global Brazil permanently, until some kind of final war over resources takes place.
“We will need our smartest scientists, our brightest engineers, and visionary policy makers to get this done.”
Not those idiots who have been working on it the last 25 years.