Why Sarah Palin is wrong (along with a lot of other critics of cap-and-trade)

Sarah Palin, supposedly, said this (in part) in the Washington Post:

"There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy."

Meanwhile, in Europe, they are planning for the future:

Sahara to Europe solar power plan gets warm welcome

"The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) is powered by 12 mostly German companies from engineering, energy and finance sectors but has also won support from groups in Algeria and Spain and from officials in Egypt and Jordan.

The project, scheduled for completion in 2050, would see solar power generators span North Africa and the Middle East to Saudi Arabia, with the electricity generated shared by producer countries and European partners."

But what about cars, trucks, buses, transportation in general?

The Fuel of the Future is Grassoline (this is a draft; the final version is on newsstands now)

"Huge amounts of cellulosic biomass can be sustainably harvested to produce fuel. According to an upcoming study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy, the U.S. can produce at least 1.3 billion dry tons of cellulosic biomass every year, and all without decreasing the amount of biomass available for our food, animal feed or exports. This much biomass could produce more than 100 billion gallons per year of grassoline, or about half the current annual consumption of gasoline and diesel in the U.S. Similar projections estimate that the global supply of cellulosic biomass has an energy content equivalent to between 34 billion to 160 billion barrels of oil per year, numbers that exceed the world’s current annual consumption of 30 billion barrels of oil."

That's why Palin is (and a vast majority of all the other critics are) wrong. Cap-and-trade forces energy suppliers to stop thinking about the wasteful and unsustainable methods and sources of the past and to start thinking about converting to the future. The progressive steps force conversion to those sources of energy that are not wasteful, less polluting (yes, excess CO₂ is a pollutant just like excess fat in your diet isn't good for you) and which can get us off the disaster-in-the-making path we're on.

Of course I should mention there's probably a place for nuclear energy in the mix, but part of the problem with nuclear is the prohibitive cost of new plants and another part of the problem is the operational lifetime of existing plants, both of which I'm examining. The on-the-horizon goal is a cheaper, simpler-to-build plant with double the lifetime. Nobody said it would be easy.

Do I like cap-and-trade because it might force a switch to nuclear energy? NO, I like cap-and-trade because it's the first step in moving away from the way the world currently creates energy for a technological society, which can't continue, both for environmental and basic economic/technical reasons. Ms. Palin and her ilks wants to burn-baby-burn until that cost becomes prohibitively expensive, and then start to look for alternatives. The time to start looking for, looking at, researching, developing, and implementing alternatives is now, not a "then" 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the future.

Think I'm wrong? How many typewriter repairmen do you know that still make a living at it?

[This is not to say that Waxman-Markey is a great bill; it's certainly not what will pass the Senate. But it dictates action, and no longer allows us to sucking our collective societal thumbs whilst sitting in a shrinking pool of noxious oil, wondering what to do with ourselves.

This is what they say at the end of the Scientific American article:

"Indeed, if we maintain our current national commitment to move beyond oil, we will see an explosive growth in cellulosic biofuels over the next five to 15 years as biomass conversion technologies move from the laboratory to commercial scale. This move towards grassoline will fundamentally change the world. It is a move that is now long overdue."

Get your pretty ass out of the way before it gets run over by a lawn mower, Sarah.