Why is the Cato Institute suddenly reading out of Amory Lovins' playbook?

[wtmusic]

Hint: it has nothing to do with nuclear being "junk economics", but quite the opposite: shifting public opinion is making it a promising alternative to fossil fuels.



"Others might disagree with my categorization of this video as a smoking gun, but Source Watch indicates that the Cato Institute was co-founded by Charles Koch. Here is what the entry says about that co-founder - he is "the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries; the largest privately owned company in the United States. Though diversified, the company amassed most of its fortune in oil trading and refining." It is also worth noting that Cato is a leading climate change skeptic and employs Dr. Patrick Michaels as a senior fellow. It is pretty clear that Cato was founded with oil and gas money and is a strong advocate for oil, coal and natural gas.

Since this story indicates that Cato is also a committed opponent of nuclear energy, based on faulty logic that calls a loan guarantee a government give away, it qualifies for the smoking gun designation."

http://theenergycollective.com/TheEnergyCollective/62743

[joshcryer]

1. Two words: natural gas.

[kristopher]

2. Says Ron Adams "friend" of the Nuclear Energy Insitute

There is no link between the Cato Institute and Lovins EXCEPT the fact that nuclear power is a massive public boondoggle. The libertarian, antigovernment Cato Institute has long been a critic of government support for nuclear power. Outside of that aspect of the technology, they don't seem to have a problem with the technology.


The supporters of nuclear energy have nothing in common with the Green movement either, but here you are posting on a Green website trying to make people believe you share their values when in fact, CO2 is just a convenient excuse for promoting a technology.

Even opposites can occasionally share the same view of matter.

But in fact the major base of support for nuclear power is much more closely aligned with fossil fuels than Cato is aligned with Lovins:

Associated Press/Stanford University Poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. Nov. 17-29, 2009. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.

"In general, would you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants at this time?"
Favor 49 Oppose 48 Unsure 3

***********************************************************************

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009. N=1,038 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

“To address the country’s energy needs, would you support or oppose action by the federal government to ?” (Half Sample)

"Increase coal mining"
Support 52, Oppose 45, Unsure 3

"Build more nuclear power plants"
Support 52, Oppose 46, Unsure 2

"Develop more solar and wind power"
Support 91, Oppose 8, Unsure 1

"Increase oil and gas drilling"
Support 64, Oppose 33, Unsure 3

"Develop electric car technology"
Support 82, Oppose 17, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by businesses and industries"
Support 78, Oppose 20, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by consumers like yourself"
Support 73, Oppose 25, Unsure 3

"Require car manufacturers to improve the fuel-efficiency of vehicles sold in this country"
Support 85, Oppose 14, Unsure 1

Asked of those who support building more nuclear power plants:
"Would you favor or oppose building a nuclear power plant within 50 miles of your home?"
Favor 66, Oppose 33

[joshcryer]

3. The Cato Institute is against nuclear power "welfare" but pro-nat gas welfare.

[kristopher]

4. Show me where that is their position.

[joshcryer]

5. Ignores Natural Gas Subsidies

http://theenergycollective.com/TheEnergyCollective/62743

[kristopher]

10. That is nothing more than another blogger making the same unsupported claim

Show me anything in the product of the Cato Institute that says they support subsidies for natural gas. You claim is part of the nonexistent link being manufactured between Cato and Lovins, so back it up.

[joshcryer]

12. They don't bash the subsidies that natural gas receives.

Show me where they do.

[kristopher]

15. Unless your next post is a quote from Cato supporting natural gas subsidies...

You are part of the pronuclear troupe trying to discredit Lovins because of he is a persuasive opponent of nuclear power. YOU asserted that they are working for natural gas, so YOU support your assertion if you can.
Cato is consistently against ALL subsidies.

[joshcryer]

16. I didn't even mention Lovins.

[kristopher]

29. You didn't support your false assertion regarding Cato supporting natural gas subsidies

[joshcryer]

31. Cato is against natural gas subsidies? Got a cite for that?

[kristopher]

32. Cato is against all subsidies for anything. That puts the burden on you - still.

[joshcryer]

34. Cato would not consider tax breaks subsidies, then.

Cato does not consider externalized costs because they're free market ideologues who think that everything will be A-OK if the markets are allowed to function.

[joshcryer]

35. For example, they don't even believe oil gets subsidies:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=7066

Some on the Right, of course, would argue that any taxation of corporate activity is counterproductive in that it unfairly taxes earnings twice (once when booked by corporate accountants and then again when those earnings are disbursed to stockholders). From this perspective, tax breaks simply allow companies to keep what is best left to them in the first place and should not be thought of as a subsidy. A variation of this argument holds that the less government takes in the better, so all tax breaks (and tax cuts, for that matter) are worth embracing.

[kristopher]

37. Do you know how to read?

That clip doesn't say "they don't believe oil gets subsidies" it says they do not equate tax breaks with subsidies. That is consistent with their libertarian anti-tax philosophy. I don't agree, but I can't dispute the consistency of their position.

[joshcryer]

39. The largest subsidy for oil and gas is through tax breaks.

If you don't include that then oil and gas don't get "significant subsidies" at all.

[joshcryer]

40. Here's how they apply their metric for subsidies, kristopher:

You wouldn't agree with it, and rightly so. It's fucking nonsense.

edit: oops, forgot the link: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-390es.html

The paper is enlightening. They just make the definition up out of nowhere.

[joshcryer]

41. Here's how progressives calculate subsidies:

(And free market anarchists.)

http://www.progress.org/2003/energy22.htm

The report divides the external costs of gasoline usage into five primary areas: (1) Tax Subsidization of the Oil Industry; (2) Government Program Subsidies; (3) Protection Costs Involved in Oil Shipment and Motor Vehicle Services; (4) Environmental, Health, and Social Costs of Gasoline Usage; and (5) Other Important Externalities of Motor Vehicle Use. Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14.

Or a slightly more realistic estimate, since you probably shouldn't include externalized costs in this comparison:

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0921-hance_subsidies.html

During the fiscal years of 2002-2008 the United States handed out subsidies to fossil fuel industries to a tune of 72 billion dollars, while renewable energy subsidies, during the same period, reached 29 billion dollars. Conducted by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the research shows that the US government has heavily subsidized 'dirty fuels' that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

The funds provided to renewable energy sources plunges further when one takes into account that of the 29 billion dollars, 16.8 billion went to subsidizing corn-based ethanol, an energy source that numerous studies have shown is not carbon neutral and has been blamed in part for deforestation in the tropics and the global food crisis. The remaining 12.2 billion went to wind, solar, non-corn based biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

Of the 72 billion dollars given to fossil fuels, 2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage. The rest of the funds went to oil and coal.

[joshcryer]

42. Direct link to MongaBay paper:

http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm

The vast majority of subsidy dollars to fossil fuels can be attributed to just a handful of tax breaks, such as the Foreign Tax Credit ($15.3 billion) and the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels ($14.1 billion, though this credit has since been phased out). The largest of these, the Foreign Tax Credit, applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial tax treatmen

Cato doesn't believe tax-breaks are subsidies.

[joshcryer]

36. More on Cato's position on subsidies and oil:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1249

Special tax deductions, direct expenditures, net excise taxes, and research and development expenditures are constantly targeted by oil critics. However, those subsidies are a small share of oil revenues and far less generous than the preferences and subsidies provided for rival businesses and technologies such as mass transit and alternative fuels. Moreover, most energy subsidies are wealth transfers that do not significantly distort energy prices or affect energy markets.

They don't want natural gas and oil to be significantly taxed.

[kristopher]

38. You're kidding - a libertarian that is antitax? WTF?

[bananas]

9. Rod Adams has turned into an internet kook

Maybe he always was an internet kook.

[NNadir]

25. It's ROD Adams. I personally know him and have met him. He's a BRIGHT guy, hardly a lightweight

blogger of the type that greenwashes dangerous fossil fuels.

As usual, the defenders of the dangerous fossil fuel supporting mystic Amory Lovins don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

And let's be clear, back in 1976 when the fraud Lovins was hawking the solar and wind "revolution" that never took place, and never will take place, he was hawking distributed coal - the same kind of wild cat coal that kills so many today in India and China - as a "transitional technology."

He's like EVERY anti-nuke, a white washer of the status quo with which he has NO problem.

He's OWNED by the dangerous fossil fuel companies, who pay him vast amounts of money to live in his shitty consumerist rat-hole in Snowmass, to which poor people have to drive long distances to wash his fucking dishes.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who has anything like decent values, here or anywhere else.

Rod Adams, by contrast, is a highly honorable, and intelligent, man. Like me, Rod has Lovins' number.

[kristopher]

26. Like i said...

A friend of the Nuclear Power Institute.

[NNadir]

43. Actually, Rod is an officer in the United States Navy.

He is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.

You don't know a damn thing about him, which is pretty typical of anti-nuke mentality, jumping to conclusions about subjects on which they know absolutely nothing at all.

Anti-nukes hate nuclear science precisely because they are incompetent to understand it, and thus rely on personal invective, distortions and character aspersions.

I note that 100% of the anti-nukes on this website are moral Lilliputians and thus cannot grasp the concept of doing something for moral reasons. They are ALL materialist consumers who can only think in materialist terms.

I have visited the NEI offices, for the record, and they took me to lunch. It was a wonderful lunch, and I felt entitled to it because of my hard and difficult work to try to save the world's largest source of climate change gas free primary energy from intellectual lilliputians.

I described the incident on line with no distortions or hidden agendas, which makes me sort of different than the average anti-nuke, like say, Gerhard Schroeder, who set out to destroy Germany's largest source of climate change gas free primary energy while working for Gazprom and while at the same time taking a paycheck from the German electorate which was under the misapprehension that he was working for Germany's interests, and not those of Gazprom.

Here's my remarks on visiting the NEI offices:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/10/171654/268">The Nuclear Shill Apologizes.

For the record, I sincerely regret apologizing to Tim Lange, at that time, who I regard as the Glenn Beck of energy "journalists," bathetic, myopic and more than a little stupid possessing a highly developed sense of that famous anti-nuke attribute, selective attention. If he had spent as much time crying over the guys who died in the Sago mine as he spent crying over uranium miners in the 1950's, maybe those 25 guys who died yesterday - guys about whom neither he nor any other anti-nuke care about - would have had an advocate.

Tim, for what it's worth, says he's "not against nuclear power," which is kind of like Strom Thurmond saying, "I'm not prejudiced. I like colored people. I got a colored maid and I think that Sammy Davis Junior sure could dance. Hell, I even helped put http://www.blackcommentator.com/21_re_print.html">a colored girl through college."

All anti-nukes are disingenuous, I have learned. I regard almost all of them as pathetic liars who are obviously unacquainted with honesty.

By the way, 100% of the people I met at the NEI seemed to be very fine people, surprisingly more tolerant of anti-nukes than I have any intention of being. Unlike anti-nukes, they all were, um, educated and gracious. They were realistic, as they saw it, and truthful. This must be why anti-nukes despise them.

The NEI is, however, entirely funded by electric utilities. I support electricity utilities when they work for nuclear power, however I oppose all dangerous fossil fuel plants, which are also owned by electrical utilities. This of course means that my agenda, and that of the NEI are not coincident.

Of course, I know that you think you know more about electricity generation than electric utilities, just as you apparently believe you know more about nuclear power than the famous Nobel Prize Winning Democrats http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1951/seaborg-bio.html">Glenn Seaborg and http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1967/bethe-bio.html">Hans Bethe, more about general relativity than http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html">Albert Einstein and more about making souffles than http://americanhistory.si.edu/juliachild/">Julia Child.

Somehow you seem to manage a good deal of outrage when someone questions these self descriptions.

On reflection, I can certainly understand how you come to such outrage. You have a remarkable capacity for being oblivious.

[kristopher]

44. Adams is a dickhead.

[NNadir]

45. Usually in my experience, this type of characterization is often made by ignorant people in...

...connection with people who are their intellectual superiors.

Anti-intellectualism is the hallmark of people whose entire outlook is framed by dogmatism.

[TheWraith]

6. Is anyone surprised?

The Cato people are owned and operated by big business, including the fossil fuel industry as a major shareholder. The same is true for Lovins. Besides which, the Cato types don't like nuclear power because it inherently means government regulations. They much prefer the filthy oil, coal, and gas alternatives where they can dump millions of tons of emissions into the atmosphere without consequence.

[joshcryer]

7. Yeah, these are guys who believe in pocket nuclear bombs for self-defense.

Not kidding, I used to argue with these types. Unfortunately this forum has a few Cato-like pro-capitalists, and they are happy to promote the Cato Institute's ideals.

[bananas]

8. "Suddenly" ???? BWAHAHAHA - They've ALWAYS known nuclear is uneconomic!!!

The Cato Institute has always known that nuclear energy is uneconomic.
All that's happened is John Stossel has "suddenly" become aware of it.
Here's an article from two years ago where it's mentioned:

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x128698

Anti-Nuclear Renaissance: A Powerful but Partial and Tentative Victory Over Atomic Energy

<snip>

Free market advocates joined in from Forbes Magazine and the Cato Institute, which objects to billions in taxpayer funds going to support what Forbes has called “the largest managerial disaster in business history.”

<snip>

[kristopher]

11. Here is another from 1992

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n1/reg15n1-rothwell.html

[bananas]

14. Good find - here's one from 2003

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3134

No Corporate Welfare for Nuclear Power

by Navin Nayak and Jerry Taylor

Navin Nayak is an environmental advocate with U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute.

Added to cato.org on June 21, 2003

This article appeared on cato.org on June 21, 2003.

With federal government spending through the roof and projected deficits setting new records every day, it is perhaps surprising that the Bush administration and Congress want to use billions of taxpayer dollars to single-handedly resurrect the moribund nuclear industry. Old habits, however, die hard. The federal government has always maintained a unique public-private partnership with the nuclear industry, wherein the costs of nuclear power are shared by the public but the profits are enjoyed privately. In an attempt to resuscitate this dying industry, the current Senate energy bill proposes unprecedented federal support for nuclear power.

Despite extensive and continuous government assistance -- including more than $66 billion in research and development alone -- no nuclear power plant has been ordered and built in the U.S. since 1973. After building more than a hundred plants between 1954-1973, orders have been cancelled over the last thirty years, and capacity in the industry has stagnated since 1989.

The decline of nuclear power is a result of several factors: the Three Mile Island disaster heightened public safety fears and citizen opposition to the siting of plants in their neighborhoods grew. But nuclear power was ultimately rejected by investors because it simply does not make economic sense. In truth, nuclear power has never made economic sense and exists purely as a creature of government.

Navin Nayak is an environmental advocate with U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute.
More by Jerry Taylor

In fact, a recent report by Scully Capital Services, an investment banking and financial services firm, commissioned by the Department of Energy (DOE), highlighted three federal subsidies and regulations -- termed "show stoppers" -- without which the industry would grind to a halt. These "show stoppers" include the Price Anderson Act, which limits the liability of the nuclear industry in case of a serious nuclear accident -- leaving taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions in compensation costs; federal disposal of nuclear waste in a permanent repository, which will save the industry billions at taxpayer expense; and licensing regulations, wherein the report recommends that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission further grease the skids of its quasi-judicial licensing process to preclude successful interventions from opponents.

<snip>

[joshcryer]

13. Only on E&E will DU'ers cite fucking Cato Institute favorably.

[bananas]

17. Rod Adams and wtmusic don't know what they're talking about and are making stuff up

They are displaying their own ignorance when they claim "suddenly".
Rod Adams is making up some bizarre conspiracy theory.
They aren't following the same "playbook",
about the only thing Lovins and Cato agree on is the cost issue.
In fact, most independent analysis agree on that.

(some edits to clarify my point)

[joshcryer]

18. I don't care about the spurious Lovins connection that is being attempted here.

I care that Cato Institute and certain posters here are aligned somewhat, ideologically.

[bananas]

19. What the fuck are you talking about?

The Cato Institute is libertarian, maybe they are in favor of marijuana legalization, like many DUers, does it bother you that they are "aligned somewhat" ideologically?
On some issues, libertarians and progressives agree, on other issues, libertarians and conservatives agree, that's why they are liberatarians and not progressives or conservatives.

[joshcryer]

20. I should have been clearer. Being economically aligned with CI makes you, imo, not progressive.

[bananas]

22. "economically aligned" ??? Because we agree how expensive it is?

Cato is also against renewables because they are currently more expensive than fossil fuels.
Cato doesn't want feed-in-tariffs or renewable energy portfolios.
The only people who are "economically aligned" with Cato are the pro-nukes who believe that nuclear energy is cheap;
they disagree with Cato on the cost, but agree ideologically.

[joshcryer]

23. Because you place the markets over government subsidies.

And we know that the markets are physically incapable of averting catastrophic climate change. Period.

[bananas]

27. No, I don't place the markets over government subsidies.

I've even said that I support government R&D for fusion and advanced fisssion.
I don't support building the Generation III reactors (EPR, AP-1000, etc).
A few years ago, the nuclear industry was claiming they could build them for less than $2,000/kW,
which was obviously bullshit, but a lot of people believed it.
There were even crackpots claiming that breeder reactors could be built for $1,000/kW.

http://www.grist.org/article/nuclear-power-no-climate-cure-all/#c61186

* Charles Barton 1810
* 19 Jun 2007 3:30am 1182249009 1182277809

Generation IV reactors can be mass produced for under a billion dollars a MW. The deal with mass production is that the more you produce the less each unit costs. Solving a big problem means thinking big. Is it possible to mass produce 50 reactors a year? Certainly. How about 100? Yes, why not? The only problem here is an unwillingness to think creatively, to use a little imagination to solve a problem, instead of wringing our hands and saying it can't be done. We will be defeated by a lack of courage and a lack of will, not by a lack of human capacity to solve our problems.

http://www.grist.org/article/nuclear-power-no-climate-cure-all/#c61191

* Patrick Mazza 1627
* 19 Jun 2007 4:50am 1182253801 1182282601

If Gen IV nuclear reactors could be mass produced at $1 billion a pop, as Charles Barton says, why aren't they? Is this some kind of conspiracy? Not likely.

Full disclosure - I was one of the 27 members of the Keystone factfinding. And there was general agreement around the table, from the enviro to ratepayer advocate to nuclear industry side, that Gen IV is at least 20 years out from commericalization, if that. That is why the process focused on expected technologies. The general expectation is that reactors built over coming decades will be advanced variants of the light water reactors in use today. This is what the industry's own understandings and projections reflect. Yes, the South Africans are developing a modular pebble bed reactor, but that will have to be proven out.

Joe has it right that Reuters had it wrong. The report looks at one Pacala-Socolow Wedge (=14% of needed carbon reductions to avoid doubled concentrations, which probably still is 100 ppm CO2 over where we need to be, and finds that for nuclear to reach even one an extremely heavy lift, equal to the best construction rate the industry has ever acheived and well below authoritative industry projections.

Place on top of that the finding that new nukes would cost 8-11 cents/kilowatt hour delivered at the plant, before around 2.5 cents delivery costs, and what emerges is that nukes are a very costly option at least 2 cents/kWh over new wind. And UCS has criticized that number as too low! So any nuclear revival would require public policy support, probably in excess of the $6 billion the feds put on the table in Energy Act 2005.

Bottom line question as the political debate ramps up - Is nuclear really what we want to subsidize? Or are there better investments the public can make such as mass-scale wind and energy efficiency that do not have the associated waste and proliferation problems?

edit to add:
The Pebble Bed is dead.
UCS was right, the keystone estimate for nuclear was too low.
And Mazza was right, the $6B has grown to over $50B.
The nuclear industry has no credibility.

[joshcryer]

30. None have been built and your "cost projectsions" are made up nonsense.

Why you believe "cost projections" that aren't reflected by reality, I don't know. I bet your same sources would have Gen IV cost projections much higher.

[bananas]

47. Nope.

[kristopher]

21. There is no ideological alignment

Being in agreement on objective facts does not constitute ideology. The objective fact is that nuclear power is unsustainable without massive government support; there is a great deal of difference on what the implications are of that fact.

[joshcryer]

24. "Objective facts" I've found is outright dishonesty.

[bananas]

28. Dishonesty from the nuclear industry.

You can't trust the nuclear industry.

[joshcryer]

33. List of dishonest positions I've heard here:

That nuclear costs are astronomical, when no new nuclear is being built in the United States, and where overseas nuclear is being built at a fraction of the claimed costs. That the government doesn't have first dibs on assets with loan guarantees, when it most certainly does. That oversight is thrown out, when new nuclear cannot even dig a hole in the ground without NRC permission. That nuclear is as bad as coal-CCS based on a study that assumes a 40 year lifetime when nuclear will run 60 years, and Gen III will run 120.

The only truthful thing I have heard from anti-nukers on this forum is that it takes up to a decade for new nuclear to go from planning to criticality (certainly much shorter than the study that claims around 20 years, but still very bad).

Otherwise everything else is frankly dishonest, intended to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt in nuclear. For reasons which are lost to me, given that this is a simple web forum that isn't going to change policy. It is clear that new nuclear is being built, nothing is going to change that. It is clear that nothing is being done about climate change, and it is unlikely a subforum on a liberal website is going to change that.

You're in fact in a minority with your dishonest position on nuclear here on this forum. It's just that there are only two or three of us who actually actively address the disinformation. It would, admittedly, be easier, if we just let the posts die. But the search for truth is too great.

[bananas]

46. Wow - you've listed a lot of dishonest things you've heard from nuclear proponents

What's odd is that you seem to believe them.