To stop our climate-change-driven suicide, Congress must stop allowing oil exports, end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and promote clean American energy
I get all the stats and the insanity part of this Report, but you said the reason why to end fossil fuel subsidies at the beginning---it's the right thing to do.
That's the message we must send to the youth fighting for their future. We owe it to them to show our solidarity and sincere concern for what we have done. It's "adulting", it's being a good example, and it's putting our money where our mouth is. If we want a legacy in the form of a livable planet, we should try to save the world alongside these kids and the scientists.
No more blah blah blah. We have to do this work, because Greta can't be everywhere.
The fact is clear that Thom doesn't know oil that well. He gets a lot right, but a lot more wrong.
I spent 35 years in oil, mostly consulting outside the USA. I've consulted witt pretty much every major oil company. There is not one oil company on earth that I know of that thinks they can force people to buy oil by increasing the supply. Not one.
I'm frankly surprised that Thom thinks supply side economics works. Supply side economics is also known as "trickle down" or "reaganomics" or the term most actual economists use "Total Bullshirt".
Markets are demand driven. Oil companies supply oil, and NEVER drill until there is a large enough gap between supply and demand to drive up price.
If you want people to quit burning fossil fuels, which is MY goal, increasing the price of oil will do it, but Americans will scream about how they are being "ripped off". OK, so we decrease the price of oil, as 85% of Americans want, and the Democrats. There is only one possible way for the oil industry to decrease the price, increase supply. The oil industry can't do ANYTHING to make customers demand less oil.
So, how do we solve this?
Reaching back into my MBA training, the answer is obvious. In the MBA we learn a valuable - but totally obvious fact - incentives drive actions. So, CHANGE THE INCENTIVES.
Removing the corporate welfare going to oil won't do anything but increase cost. We need to reduce demand.
Here is one solution,
1. Implement a federal tax credit to allow the deduction of the ENTIRE COST of solar cells from taxes, and allow home owners to carry anything unused forward. That way installation is free.
2, Implement a federal tax credit to reimburse power companies for purchasing power from rooftop solar for the first 7 years. Since the solar is free to the owner, the power company doesn't need to lose money on this, our goal is to make fossil fuel power plants unprofitable so they get shut down.
3. Implement a federal tax credit on the purchase of electric cars, make it 100% of the price of the cheapest electric car.
5. Fully support the offer made by US oil companies a year ago to produce clean renewable fuels and substitute them for gasoline and diesel. They can do it right now, and the only reason they aren't [doing it] is because they need a federal law to standardize on the clean renewable fuel so they all sell fuel that any vehicle can use.
In very few years, nobody will be burning fossil oil.
I'll tell you what CANNOT work. If we tax the crap out of oil companies, the price of gasoline will go UP and all of us consumers will be sending more of our income to the federal government. That is silly. If we stop exporting US oil, pretty much nothing will change, a tiny few contracts will be rearranged to buy elsewhere, but again, oil is a demand driven market, supply side economics are bullshirt, and reducing supply won't reduce demand unless it increases price, and even then most demand is inelastic so it will just make everyone poorer without reducing oil demand. If we get the KSA to increase oil extraction, first we will find out THEY CAN'T, but also it will just rearrange supply because - ONE LAST TIME - oil is a demand driven market, supply side economics DO NOT WORK, and reducing supply won't reduce demand unless it increases price, and even then most demand is inelastic so it will just make everyone poorer without reducing oil demand.
Again, if you want people to do something, incentivize it. Only 2% of us and really only 2% with plenty of income, can increase our transportation cost without having to slash elsewhere.
You have to offer a CHEAPER alternative, and you can't tell an illiterate family of laborers to just run out and buy a Tesla.
Wow! That gal is resourceful! Love it! And old Nortons never die - they just become fire trucks for kids!
I rode a lot of roads in the mountains of Southern California when I lived there. Loved it! Went out every weekend. Got a part time job writing for Cycle News - looking back, I couldn't really call it writing, but people read it and were pleased to meet me when I was out reporting, and it did encourage me to become a full time writer, which I did for 18 years, before going into healing with the chi we used in T'ai Chi Chuan.
Which makes me think, regarding your dizziness from COVID: It sounds like vestibular disorientation, which means it has affected your inner ear and your brain stem. I recognize it as I have it too, beginning about 26 years ago. That was when I first fell on my butt executing Fair Lady Works Shuttle, a series of three 280 degree spins with a combination of blocks/strikes against four attackers. I realized immediately I needed to be very watchful over my verticality. I could no longer ignore the fact that performing T'ai Chi into late dusk was a challenge. I really needed a horizon I could fix on. It was the diabetes, which I had already been dealing with for 30 years. For a lot of us, it affects the brain stem and the middle ear. I continued to ride, and I was fine as long as I was moving, but I had to start watching my stops. I could still balance at stop signs for 2 - 3 seconds without putting my feet down, but I had to really pay attention. But it has steadily gotten worse, and now that I haven't ridden since February of last year, I'm wary of trying. I know I don't want to do on my old 890 lb. behemoth, as comfortable as it always was. I would lack the leg strength do deal with any slight tipping I failed to notice. Now my son, who has always wanted to go riding with me, is dying to get on the road with me, him on his Harley full dresser, and me on his 2,000 cc V-twin Big Dog, his pride and joy. It will be considerably lighter, that is for sure, but I'd sure like to ride a beater around a parking lot at very low speeds, with non-dab stops, before I got on that baby.
BTW, I'm still curious as to how this young woman managed to convert pieces of a camshaft into axles. Did she mill off the lobes? Sure hope they weren't too eccentric! Or maybe the kids LIKED the lobes, if they were on the mild side. What a ride!
I used to go to school in Missouri, Tarkio College. A small Presbyterian school where folks back east sent their kids when they couldn't get into the Ivy League schools. I got a full scholarship, everything but food and books, on account of I could get straight A's and keep their averages up for the stats. Made some very wealthy friends. One invited me to go to the South Pacific with him to have a custom schooner built from teak, put together an all-girl crew and sail around the world. His family owned an importing business. I smoked a pipe, and they brought in Dutch tobacco. He always said he wanted to send me a big sample box, and I'll be damned if he didn't! I was managing a head shop in Capitola, California, when one day a mysterious box with no return address showed up, years after Tarkio, and it was chock full of two-ounce packages of Dutch tobacco! Oh, the boat? I was married! My wife was already in California, serving an internship at the Sawtelle VA hospital, and I intended to join her as soon as I could, and I did. Hence, my time in the southlands of California.
Which reminds me, since I have lived in Northern California for the past 55 years. Two oil refineries have just been granted permission to convert to producing alternative fuels, but it's the wrong stuff - soy beans and animal fats. We are all very disappointed. Sheer greenwashing. It will not help the environment one whit, if it doesn't make things worse, and the communities around them will suffer the same problems they always had. It's very sad.
I get all the stats and the insanity part of this Report, but you said the reason why to end fossil fuel subsidies at the beginning---it's the right thing to do.
That's the message we must send to the youth fighting for their future. We owe it to them to show our solidarity and sincere concern for what we have done. It's "adulting", it's being a good example, and it's putting our money where our mouth is. If we want a legacy in the form of a livable planet, we should try to save the world alongside these kids and the scientists.
No more blah blah blah. We have to do this work, because Greta can't be everywhere.
The fact is clear that Thom doesn't know oil that well. He gets a lot right, but a lot more wrong.
I spent 35 years in oil, mostly consulting outside the USA. I've consulted witt pretty much every major oil company. There is not one oil company on earth that I know of that thinks they can force people to buy oil by increasing the supply. Not one.
I'm frankly surprised that Thom thinks supply side economics works. Supply side economics is also known as "trickle down" or "reaganomics" or the term most actual economists use "Total Bullshirt".
Markets are demand driven. Oil companies supply oil, and NEVER drill until there is a large enough gap between supply and demand to drive up price.
If you want people to quit burning fossil fuels, which is MY goal, increasing the price of oil will do it, but Americans will scream about how they are being "ripped off". OK, so we decrease the price of oil, as 85% of Americans want, and the Democrats. There is only one possible way for the oil industry to decrease the price, increase supply. The oil industry can't do ANYTHING to make customers demand less oil.
So, how do we solve this?
Reaching back into my MBA training, the answer is obvious. In the MBA we learn a valuable - but totally obvious fact - incentives drive actions. So, CHANGE THE INCENTIVES.
Removing the corporate welfare going to oil won't do anything but increase cost. We need to reduce demand.
Here is one solution,
1. Implement a federal tax credit to allow the deduction of the ENTIRE COST of solar cells from taxes, and allow home owners to carry anything unused forward. That way installation is free.
2, Implement a federal tax credit to reimburse power companies for purchasing power from rooftop solar for the first 7 years. Since the solar is free to the owner, the power company doesn't need to lose money on this, our goal is to make fossil fuel power plants unprofitable so they get shut down.
3. Implement a federal tax credit on the purchase of electric cars, make it 100% of the price of the cheapest electric car.
5. Fully support the offer made by US oil companies a year ago to produce clean renewable fuels and substitute them for gasoline and diesel. They can do it right now, and the only reason they aren't [doing it] is because they need a federal law to standardize on the clean renewable fuel so they all sell fuel that any vehicle can use.
In very few years, nobody will be burning fossil oil.
I'll tell you what CANNOT work. If we tax the crap out of oil companies, the price of gasoline will go UP and all of us consumers will be sending more of our income to the federal government. That is silly. If we stop exporting US oil, pretty much nothing will change, a tiny few contracts will be rearranged to buy elsewhere, but again, oil is a demand driven market, supply side economics are bullshirt, and reducing supply won't reduce demand unless it increases price, and even then most demand is inelastic so it will just make everyone poorer without reducing oil demand. If we get the KSA to increase oil extraction, first we will find out THEY CAN'T, but also it will just rearrange supply because - ONE LAST TIME - oil is a demand driven market, supply side economics DO NOT WORK, and reducing supply won't reduce demand unless it increases price, and even then most demand is inelastic so it will just make everyone poorer without reducing oil demand.
Again, if you want people to do something, incentivize it. Only 2% of us and really only 2% with plenty of income, can increase our transportation cost without having to slash elsewhere.
You have to offer a CHEAPER alternative, and you can't tell an illiterate family of laborers to just run out and buy a Tesla.
Wow! That gal is resourceful! Love it! And old Nortons never die - they just become fire trucks for kids!
I rode a lot of roads in the mountains of Southern California when I lived there. Loved it! Went out every weekend. Got a part time job writing for Cycle News - looking back, I couldn't really call it writing, but people read it and were pleased to meet me when I was out reporting, and it did encourage me to become a full time writer, which I did for 18 years, before going into healing with the chi we used in T'ai Chi Chuan.
Which makes me think, regarding your dizziness from COVID: It sounds like vestibular disorientation, which means it has affected your inner ear and your brain stem. I recognize it as I have it too, beginning about 26 years ago. That was when I first fell on my butt executing Fair Lady Works Shuttle, a series of three 280 degree spins with a combination of blocks/strikes against four attackers. I realized immediately I needed to be very watchful over my verticality. I could no longer ignore the fact that performing T'ai Chi into late dusk was a challenge. I really needed a horizon I could fix on. It was the diabetes, which I had already been dealing with for 30 years. For a lot of us, it affects the brain stem and the middle ear. I continued to ride, and I was fine as long as I was moving, but I had to start watching my stops. I could still balance at stop signs for 2 - 3 seconds without putting my feet down, but I had to really pay attention. But it has steadily gotten worse, and now that I haven't ridden since February of last year, I'm wary of trying. I know I don't want to do on my old 890 lb. behemoth, as comfortable as it always was. I would lack the leg strength do deal with any slight tipping I failed to notice. Now my son, who has always wanted to go riding with me, is dying to get on the road with me, him on his Harley full dresser, and me on his 2,000 cc V-twin Big Dog, his pride and joy. It will be considerably lighter, that is for sure, but I'd sure like to ride a beater around a parking lot at very low speeds, with non-dab stops, before I got on that baby.
BTW, I'm still curious as to how this young woman managed to convert pieces of a camshaft into axles. Did she mill off the lobes? Sure hope they weren't too eccentric! Or maybe the kids LIKED the lobes, if they were on the mild side. What a ride!
I used to go to school in Missouri, Tarkio College. A small Presbyterian school where folks back east sent their kids when they couldn't get into the Ivy League schools. I got a full scholarship, everything but food and books, on account of I could get straight A's and keep their averages up for the stats. Made some very wealthy friends. One invited me to go to the South Pacific with him to have a custom schooner built from teak, put together an all-girl crew and sail around the world. His family owned an importing business. I smoked a pipe, and they brought in Dutch tobacco. He always said he wanted to send me a big sample box, and I'll be damned if he didn't! I was managing a head shop in Capitola, California, when one day a mysterious box with no return address showed up, years after Tarkio, and it was chock full of two-ounce packages of Dutch tobacco! Oh, the boat? I was married! My wife was already in California, serving an internship at the Sawtelle VA hospital, and I intended to join her as soon as I could, and I did. Hence, my time in the southlands of California.
Which reminds me, since I have lived in Northern California for the past 55 years. Two oil refineries have just been granted permission to convert to producing alternative fuels, but it's the wrong stuff - soy beans and animal fats. We are all very disappointed. Sheer greenwashing. It will not help the environment one whit, if it doesn't make things worse, and the communities around them will suffer the same problems they always had. It's very sad.