Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Hothouse Politics

"Better never than late." - Rob Dawg on climate change legislation.

As you may have noticed lately the Congress and Federal government in general have been having a quiet period with not much happening to take up their attention. To address that dearth of pertinent events in need of their beneficence Ed Markey, chairman of the House energy and environment subcommittee has taken the lead.

From the FT:
Mr Markey said the debate in Congress was no longer focused on whether to pass climate change legislation but on how much to spend on it. His committee’s goal is to complete legislation by Memorial Day so it can go to the House floor.

“We know the G8 and the rest of the world is waiting for the United States to stop being the laggard and be the leader,” Mr Markey told CERA, a week-long energy conference that began on Monday. “There are potentially catastrophic consequences for the planet if we do not act.’’

Mr Markley said that neither the government or the private sector has invested enough in combating greenhouse gas emissions.

“The tools to solve these problems, in many instances, have not been invented yet,’’ Mr Markey said.

He urged Congress to set market-driven policies to give energy companies certainty and opportunities to participate in the “revolution” about to take place around climate change. He likened it to the developments that took place in telecommunications sector.

Where to begin? First, the US has been a leader. The rest of the world is fast adopting our positions vice AGW. Second, the entire AGW scheme is collapsing. Third, don't they have something better to do?

I'm getting tired of all this extraConstitutional meddling.

9 comments:

Property Flopper said...

My FIRST thought is I like the stripper pic better.

Rob Dawg said...

As Mr. Bond is so fond of repeating; "As long as the collars and cuffs match..."

Jean ValJean said...

I agree the US should take the lead in environmental issues!

We should lead, like Sweden and Germany

Best quote from the Canadian article:
A northern country with a social conscience, Sweden long ago decided to eschew nuclear power and turn its efforts to renewable sources of energy. Thus it has led the world in renewable power technology: It has captured the wind, tamed the rivers and the seas, increased insulation, stolen energy from the sun and even tapped the Earth for its thermal power.

But last week, the Swedish government conceded the futility of trying to run a modern nation on a dream. It turned back a policy set out in 1980 to decommission all its nuclear power plants, and embarked on a new age of the atom.

Rob Dawg said...

JvJ,
Just when I again get dissolutioned by my own blog the diamonds show up and shine. Thanks.

Pleather Murse said...

Well, I took the opportunity to close out my Mar 97.00 SPY short calls (which had been making me a little nervous before today) and sold a bunch of Feb 65.00 SPY puts. At almost a 50% premium, more than 20% OTM and only ten days to expiry it feels like a better position.

sm_landlord said...

"It turned back a policy set out in 1980 to decommission all its nuclear power plants, and embarked on a new age of the atom."

Waking up is hard to do, but there's nothing like bucket full of cold water to bring you around and focus your attention.

Now if we could only get our own pols to wake up. Unfortunately, visions of solar cells are still dancing in their heads while Iran just demonstrated a long-range delivery vehicle.

Rob Dawg said...

Bulk solar is below $3/watt. 15-20% of US total energy consumption can be supplanted for a fifth of what keeping the banks on life support will cost.

sm_landlord said...

Rob,

Are you implying that solar is a boondoggle comparable to propping up the banks? ;-)

My understanding is that the lifecycle energy costs of solar cells is greater then the amount of energy the cells themselves produce in their service lifetime.

While uranium is quite cheap, and there seem to be a lot of good reactor designs cropping up.

Not that solar doesn't have a role, but I would like to see some serious discussion of new nuclear plants in this country RSN.

Rob Dawg said...

No, just that if you are going to throw money at a problem then solar roofs are much better than anything so far proposed.

Nukes could be wickedly cheap but there's no money to be made in that.