RFK Jr. ..Global Warming: A Real Solution

[RedEarth]

In early May, 100 of the nation's top business leaders gathered for a summit at a private resort nestled on 250 acres in California's Napa Valley. The attendees, gathered at the invitation of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, included CEOs and other top executives from such Fortune 500 corporations as Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble and BP. They had been invited to discuss ways to end America's fossil-fuel addiction and save the world from global warming. But in reality they had come to make money for their companies and that may turn out to be the thing that saves us.

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Between 1977 and 1985, Detroit boosted the fuel efficiency of its automobiles from eighteen to 27.5 miles per gallon. Oil use shrank by seventeen percent while the economy grew by twenty-seven percent. Even more important, oil imports from the Persian Gulf plunged by eighty-seven percent, breaking the cartel's power over America's economy. Had we stayed the course, we would not have needed to import a single drop of oil from the Middle East after 1986 achieving true energy independence that, in all likelihood, would have enabled us to avoid the devastating attacks of September 11th, as well as both Gulf wars.

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So why, if we can profitably slash planet-warming pollution, does the world face a climate crisis The answer is simple: market failure.

The global climate crisis is the result not of an orderly free market, but of a distorted market run amok. A truly free market is the planet's best friend. Free markets promote efficiency. "Efficiency," after all, means the elimination of waste and pollution is waste. The pollution that is catastrophically heating the Earth is the result of market failure; the incapacity of a poorly designed marketplace to place a proper value on an essential asset the atmosphere. That market failure has brought us to the brink of a planetwide environmental collapse.

King Coal and the oil barons like to pretend that their industries dominate the energy sector because their products are cheaper and more efficient than alternative fuels, giving them a competitive advantage in the free market. This is a myth. The dominance of fossil fuels is the direct result of corporate welfare and crony capitalism that would make a Nigerian dictator balk. Direct federal subsidies to Big Oil everything from loan guarantees and research support to outright tax breaks and waived royalty fees amount to as much as $17 billion a year. That taxpayer money distorts the marketplace, artificially lowering the price of gasoline and making it difficult for other fuels to compete. Little wonder that the oil industry was able to report profits of more than $137 billion last year.

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If we really want free markets in America, all direct subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry should be eliminated. In addition, indirect subsidies or "externalities" ? the hidden costs of global warming ? should be accounted for through a carbon tax. By taxing pollution instead of productivity, America could spur a wave of technological and commercial innovation that would rival the Industrial Revolution, harnessing the power of the profit motive to solve the greatest crisis facing our planet.

Here are six modest, tried-and-true mechanisms we can implement to quickly foster free-market solutions to global warming:

more............

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15051506/global_warming_a_real_solution

[NNadir]

1. Robert F. Kennedy's "solution" is to support IGCC coal, off shore gas terminals and to oppose wind

plants and nuclear plants.

He's a fraud from the get go.

[RedEarth]

2. It sounds like he's against liquefied coal....

Since I'm not an expert in energy issues, what's the difference between that and IGCC coal?

.......from the article.........

"We also need strong standards to keep some very bad technologies from rushing into the market under the banner of energy efficiency. A particularly ugly aspect of the current coal rush, for example, is the desire of the industry and its servants in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to build a new breed of refinery that would liquefy coal to replace gasoline. Advocates claim that liquid coal is clean, but the process results in nearly twice as much carbon pollution per gallon as gasoline. And whatever the process, why would we want to create an entire new industry dependent on an energy source that is procured by blowing up mountains in Appalachia and strip-mining the West?"