Why is there never an option for "all of the above"?

Posted by ARCHANGEL_M at 04/25/2007

Archangel, I would have liked to choose more than one option, but not the last one. Nuclear waste is as dangerous to mankind than global warming. It modifies DNA and causes weird birth defects.

Posted by cdifrances at 04/26/2007

All of the choices above involve taking more money from consumers already stretched with energy cost. The Kyoto Accords members can't even meet their own requirements now, Gas is already high, alternative fuel research takes to long (although this option should have started 30 years ago). Subsidizing clean nuclear power will be the least painful and generate the best, quickest benefits.

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 04/26/2007

Nothing is going to help or happen immediately, I chose Kyoto because it is comprehensive and touches them all.

Posted by samellison at 04/26/2007

I voted for ratifying the Kyoto Protocols simply because of their symbolic value. Despite Bush, many countries around the world still look to the U.S. for leadership. (Hopefully after January 2009 they'll actually find it too.) The Kyoto Protocols will send a powerful message to the rest of the world.

Posted by billsheasf at 04/26/2007

Hate to say it, but raising the gas tax is a "quick and dirty" (so to speak) fix that would be highly effective in forcing the U.S. auto industry to create fuel-efficient vehicles and consumers to kick the SUV habit. And I say this as someone who commutes literally 160+ miles a day (in a compact that gets excellent mileage, I may say -- though not a Prius, I'll admit).

Posted by w_m_bear at 04/27/2007

I chose Raise the Tax on Gasoline so that the poor people can't afford to buy gas and drive out to my suburb and rob my house.

I wanted to vote for Tax CO2 Emmissions (from power plants which is the single largest source of greenhouse gas) so that energy prices in general (natural gas/ heating oil/ electricity) will become so expensive that poor people freeze to death, thereby negating my actual vote above.

I am all for Kyoto, and would have voted for that because it appears to be working wonderfully in all of the countries that have implemented it. I also support carbon offset companies, because hey, that is a great scam, and I think I would enjoy taking guilt money from rich people so they can make me rich while they simply fuel-up their private jets to go speak at a global warming rally.

I would have voted for "Create incentives to induce mass transportation", however, if you live in any city besides new york and San-Francisco, "Mass Transit" is useless. People spend as much time driving to train stations in Cleveland and Chicago, as they would going downtown, and the cost is not much better.

I should have voted for "Invest in alternative fuels" but then I would have had to listen to a bunch of whiners complain that "Big Oil" companies are the only people making money on it, oh, and so-far, it takes more oil to produce ethanol, than the energy that you can produce by using ethanol (that is why Nebraska subsidizes ehtanol 10 cents per gallon to make it cheaper than regular, otherwise nobody would use it).

So I say go with the only REAL SOLUTION, that is make gasoline $10/gal. Then even the upper middle class will start walking to their local Wal-Mart for groceries.

Posted by WallStreet at 04/27/2007

I think that gasoline taxes should equal the $8/gal or so that Europeans pay plus the much higher licensensing (sp?) fees based on vehicle weight and engine size. This money should be used to build/buy a really good national passenger/freight railroad system and urban rapid transit systems. In the long run this is the best transport option open to us if we want to conserve our limited petroleum resources and cut CO2 emissions.

Posted by johnsang at 04/29/2007

One option is missing on your poll:

NOTHING

Posted by mfzacek at 04/29/2007

The Carbon Tax Center [carbontax.org] advocates a carbon tax on all CO2 emissions, not just gasoline. Charging American businesses and individuals a price to emit CO2 is essential to reduce U.S. emissions quickly enough to prevent atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from reaching an irreversible tipping point. For details, please take a look at our web site and feel free to offer your thoughts on our blog.

We propose a $37/ton tax on carbon the first year, with equal increases for each of the next ten years. That equates to a ten-cent tax increase per gallon of gasoline for each of ten years and a total tax of $1.00/ per gallon. We propose a relatively slow ramp-up in order to give energy consumers time to adapt to higher prices of carbon by using less energy and substituting less carbon-intensive forms of energy (e.g. more efficient cars and appliances, better insulated homes, more efficient lighting and at the electric generation level, substituting renewable energy for coal-fired generation). Politically, politicians are already wary of any type of new tax and proposing too steep a tax, such as the $8.00/gallon proposed in a previous post, would be a major strategic mistake. If such a steep increase were passed, it could lead to a counter-productive backlash.

Posted by drosenblum at 04/30/2007

To WALLSTREET [who wrote below]: You are quite an interesting read. After reading your comments, I realize that I should have chosen the only real solution... raise the price of gasoline.

Posted by ljm01901 at 05/1/2007

What's up with Cockburn's recent editorial diatribe? I think he should stick to subjects he understands...and not parrot anecdotes from drunken meetings on cruises. Sure some skepticism may be warranted (from people lightly schooled on the subject, kneejerk rightwingers, industrialists, money traders, and "freethinking" liberals/libertarians), but come on! Why the toughguy assault on "greenhousers"? Does that help the discussion, or just piss people off?

Posted by jasonandlin at 05/2/2007

Far from the propaganda its exponents espouse, nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. Aside from the waste that lasts generations, nuclear power is CO2-intensive. Nobel laureate and anti-nuke activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, quoting a Friends of the Earth Study, said: "a nuclear power plant must operate for 18 years before realizing one net calorie of energy. This is because of the amount of fossil fuel used in the manufacture and construction of the reactor and in the mining of the uranium, the milling and enriching of the uranium and the fabrication of the fuel rods."

Finally, in regards to safety, it doesn't take a meltdown for a nuclear plant to release radiation. Radiation is emitted daily by power plants during normal energy output. And how about weapons-proliferation?

Nuclear energy is only part of the problem, not the solution to global warming.

Posted by Honicker at 05/2/2007

I chose raising the gas tax, but I realize it hurts the poor disproportionally. Of course it also socks it to the jerks who bought all the giant gas guzzlers, thus getting us into this mess in the first place (or at least hastening it along). I would hope the money raised from the tax could be used to provide better mass-transit for lower-income people, but knowing us we would throw it away on corporate welfare and bombs to drop on other peoples' children.

Posted by cswalker21 at 05/2/2007

If we can somehow keep General GM Motors from again destroying the Big Red cars and the streetcars then we can return to reliable cheap energy efficient convenient people moving vehicles. Otherwise we remain one person one car with only gridlock to drive in.

Posted by tucanofulano1 at 05/3/2007

"Nuclear waste is as dangerous to mankind than global warming. It modifies DNA and causes weird birth defects."

Nuclear waste would have to be knee-deep globally to cause the same effects as temperature elevated storm systems. And that attitude is typical of people who live by cold war information on radiation.

Alpha emitters are usually the most dangerous for ingestion; alpha tends to be stopped quite readily by a sheet of paper, but getting into tissues it destroys sections of DNA; destroying transcriptase markers gives rise to tumours. Cigarettes contain an alpha emitter.

Gamma radiation is EM band, and in high enough doses can kill. It's also the weakest, but penetrates everything but lead and concrete. It's a close relative to Xray, occurs naturally in the universe and could eventually wipe out life on earth if we get a gamma-burst event nearby.

As for weird birth defects; the only real data point for this appears to have been skewed according to reports from the WHO. The area around Kiev was already littered with industrial waste from PCBs and ethanes, through to rocket fuel that rained down over the Urals. The 'conventional' toxic waste in the area was already at dangerous levels before the Chernobyl event.

The reason why nuclear is a bad idea is that the byproduct is weapons grade Plutonium, it feeds into the centralised idea of electricity distribution which is inherently wasteful and it's a cash cow that shifts the problem sideways as a stopgap, not a solution. Low grade nuclear waste is dangerous, but to put it on a par with a global nemesis is event is comparing a sharpened stick to an ICBM.

Posted by Draconis at 05/3/2007

"Dr. Helen Caldicott, quoting a Friends of the Earth Study, said: "a nuclear power plant must operate for 18 years before realizing one net calorie of energy. This is because of the amount of fossil fuel used in the manufacture and construction of the reactor and in the mining of the uranium, the milling and enriching of the uranium and the fabrication of the fuel rods."

That's the bootstrap problem. Once you've stopped using fossil fuels and move to combinant technologies it ceases to have any relevance to the argument. Further to that, most reactors are commissioned to operate 35 years plus. Over that timeline they start to show serious benefits, and she was referring to PWR reactors; one of the more dangerous, complex and over-engineered reactor types that has a tendency to explode during failure modes.

I disagree with nuclear power for other reasons other than it's icky and dangerous. Take a look at a refinery explosion and the particulate fallout for other icky and dangerous current technology.

Posted by Draconis at 05/3/2007

"Subsidizing clean nuclear power will be the least painful and generate the best, quickest benefits."

Actually it wouldn't. It would still use the same infrastructure and add to the main problem of where to put the waste; it would probably extend the time to shift to something else by a couple of decades, which doesn't actually hit the repayment time of the PWRs that they'll probably try to build.

There's also the perceptual problem of nuclear being 'clean'. It's cleaner than fossil fuels, but a number of extremely bad accidents have reduced the public perception to that of something extremely dangerous that they'd want built on another land mass to their homes.

Personally I'd go for the shotgun effect of subsidising _everything_; solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, gradient differential in all scales. Offer incentives for homeowners and incubate small businesses rather than the behomeths. Sign up for Kyoto, but that's a political manuever.

Posted by Draconis at 05/3/2007