ENERGY AND POLLUTION
Energy and pollution are international challenges, which require international consensus. For example, even if America became carbon neutral as a nation, it would not matter; global warming would continue unabated by the pollution and carbon emitted by China, India, and Africa.
For the United States we should adopt a nationwide nuclear power solution which would be better than ceding our sovereignty like in the Paris Climate Accords of 2015, which was nothing more than a big giveaway to the rest of the world with taxpayer dollars. Using social security funds, we would build regional nuclear power plants above 200 meters in elevation, each dedicated to serving the immediate vicinity. I foresee at least a network of a dozen such plants nationwide. Like one in each Federal Reserve District and two just outside of California. Each would be located in a military base, guarded by the military with orders to shoot to kill intruders who could be nut cases or terrorists.
Social security would fund the construction of these nuclear power plants. The social security would sell the power at cost plus 12 per cent profit, including amortization of the investment over a short time like 6 years. Then there would be a 10 per cent use tax. I suppose the costs of the nuclear plant to be recovered could include compensation to the military for the costs of guarding the nuclear plant. The sale of this power could be required as a base line cost of energy. Even if fossil fuels are cheaper, a tax would be collected to make the energy generated from fossil fuels equal or greater than the cost of the nuclear power. I also think that this building project should be outside of the jurisdiction of the EPA. The EPA is loaded with greens opposed to nuclear power. They will do everything in their power (pun intended) to obstruct a nuclear power program.
Nuclear energy has its drawbacks and should be viewed as a stopgap measure. The real, sustainable solution in the next century is not renewables which have a part to play, but to grow our fossil fuels, cutting out the middleman, Father Time. The answer to our energy needs lies in microbiology. I know there are efforts to use algae and seaweed to generate the oils which can be converted to gasoline, and I wish them well. But bacteria which secretes convertible oils is the real answer. The problem with seaweed and algae is that to grow them requires so much infrastructure investments that it is impractical to grow enough. Further it is not a solution for the rest of the world which does not have resources enough for the “green solutions” thus far suggested. Bacteria can be grown in a petri dish.
Implicit in all this is the incentives for renewables like artificial fossil fuels, water, geothermal, solar, or wind power would not have to be repriced or taxed. In fact we should make it a public policy not to allow any taxation of renewables in any form. I once investigated geothermal heating for my home. Then I found out that the costs of a geothermal system, let’s say $20,000, would be added to my home’s assessed valuation and be subject to property tax. The property tax would be greater than the projected savings of the heat pump. The tax policies are hurting the sustainability of the American energy supply. Catastrophic Thinking requires energy to be as decentralized as possible and as sustainable as possible. Private use of geothermal, wind, solar, and water should be free of taxes whether income, property, estate, sales, social security use tax, or any other form of tax. Of course, when private sources of energy sell their power, then the social security use tax would kick in.
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.” John Marshall. He said that, so states and local governments would not interfere with constitutional laws and national policy initiatives.
Pollution is trickier. In a catastrophe there will be much unregulated pollution. Besides fires, there will releases of toxic chemicals. Disease from dead bodies will be a real and present danger. It will be a mess. I don’t have an answer for catastrophic pollution. Your thoughts are welcome in this blog.
So where do we start? Catastrophic Thinking requires CAVEAT and common sense over selfish interests. No where are selfish interests more prevalent than in the policy conundrum of the tragedy of the commons. (Victorian economist William Forster Lloyd, in 1833). This harkens back to colonial times when everyone wanted to graze their livestock in the village commons but not pay for it. The same is true for pumping water out of our aquifers. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s there was dumping in our rivers that became so bad that the river through Cleveland caught on fire. Today, we need solutions for space junk disposal and plastics in our oceans. Micro-plastics are being found everywhere, even in living human blood. Millions of years from now, geologists from other solar systems will note the brief sojourn of the human race here on earth as a boundary in the rocks like the K-T iridium boundary for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Only our boundary legacy in the earth’s crust will be a fine line of micro-plastics embedded in the rocks. Ours will be a legacy of plastic fossils.