Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 395 Editor's Choice: 41
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Paying Lip Service
[Read the article: Bill Richardson on greening SUVs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hard to say whether Richardson is stupid or he believes that the voters are stupid. Guess it depends on if he is a George Bush type candidate or an Al Gore type candidate, but ultimately it doesn't really matter.
Let's start with the things he doesn't talk about. He doesn't talk about fusion power, which solves the carbon issue, the waste issue, and the safety issue and is by far the best solution for fixed power plants, and by extension makes electric cars cleaner, cheaper to operate, and more practical. Not suprising, since all fusion power development programs suffered from massive cuts during the Clinton administration. So the goal here is to reduce carbon emissions and dependence on foreign oil while maintaining the current global economic stratification that is so near and dear to our hearts. In effect what he is saying is that we can have a clean environment while the rich (us) stay rich and the poor (3rd world countries) stay poor. Nice to see he has priorities.
He also doesn't mention manufacturing facilities (aside from those that produce energy), over the road trucks, and freight trains, which now dwarf passenger vehicles in the amount of pollutants they create and the amount of energy they consume. So we can have a clean environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by continuing to place the entire burden on the citizens and allowing corporate interests to continue business as usual.
No mention of arcologies, which radically reduce energy requirements for habitation while eliminating most transportation needs and increasing the standard of living all in one shot.
And he says nothing about education, both for our young people so we can produce the scientists and engineers who will develop the solutions to our problems and for the populace at large so they can make intelligent decisions that will produce a cleaner environment.
As for the things he does say, it's more of the same crap we have been hearing since the Carter administration. Band aid fixes and impractical plans.
Having one pump at every gas station selling E85 would be great, although the effects of E85 are more emotional than actual unless you are a corn farmer, but it ignores the fact that this would require at least one storage tank for E85 at every gas station at a time when they are going out of business at a record rate because they can't afford to replace tanks for safety reasons, or that the tiny percentage of E85 vehicles (which will never get very large) can't support them dedicating a third of their inventory to them and will result in even more small businessmen going under.
Electric cars are great, but battery technology is the one area where we really don't know if we will ever be able to get over the hump and have practical, long lasting, affordable solutions. They can be a practical solution for urban areas, but we don't know if they will ever work in other environments, or even for urban pollution issues like taxi cabs and buses. And they are hella expensive. And what about the waste issues caused by all those used up batteries?
Hybrids are a decent interim solution, but can the government and the car companies continue to subsidize them forever? Will they? And you still have the waste issues associated with batteries.
He talks about his renewable energy initiatives under Clinton, but does he really think that getting a few hundred thousand people to use solar power to heat their pools represents some kind of great leap forward? Tax credits are well and good, but where was the initiative to make truly energy efficient homes cost the same as the crap we are building now? Where was the huge public education program to make consumers want them? Where was the cooperation with the states to reward eco-friendly builders and punish the ones that did business as usual?
And how can you talk about coal without discussing the environmental and safety issues associated with just getting the stuff out of the ground?
What he doesn't seem to get is that we aren't going to solve our problems by doing the same things better. We need to do things differently. The differences between him and other candidates amount to nothing more than semantics, but he somehow comes off sounding like a radical because people are so desperate for him to be one. Comparing himself to Kennedy, who really was a radical and who was willing to put himself on the line and commit real resources to his goals is ridiculous, and says as much about our diminished expectations as it does about the quality of his bullshit.