I take it you didn’t read the articles then!!!
You have a closed mind…so no since in discussing. Live in your dream world…I’ll live in reality.
I take it you didn’t read the articles then!!!
You have a closed mind…so no since in discussing. Live in your dream world…I’ll live in reality.
I guess maybe mountain bike had the best idea to remain silent in this no win discussion. I think all many of us want is just to be reasonable. Not extreme in either case. We don’t want polluted water but don’t want to go back to 1850 industry either so it is a compromise. Some want no cars and others want 100 mpg standards. I think we have made great progress with cars that get better than 30 mpg on the average. Nothing wrong with that but look what it took to get there-small light cars, with little engines, FWD, computer controlled, and so on. Now we are forcing the industry to go electric but at the same time not allowing the grid to expand accordingly unless with wind.
Just a little common sense is all a lot of us ask and why can’t they do their legislative mandate of an economic impact statement? Recently there was an article on Minnesota water quality. Way toward the end of the hysterical article it was reported only several bodies of water were tested and the result was one part per billion contamination which was the same as one drop per football field, many feet high. So trying to get to the point of a half a drop per dozen football fields may be just long term employment security to some agencies.
Lets not also forget that higher oil production and lower costs is having a favorable affect on breaking up the mid-east lock they have had and just the beginning of maybe socio-economic improvements in that part of the world. Nothing wrong at all if lower oil prices allow women to be able to drive or leave home without a male escort in Saudi Arabia, yes?
I agree 100% with a compromise. We live in an industrialized society so there is always some risk.
However…we don’t have to allow industry (or individuals) pollute our water. Every couple years keep hearing new industrial accidents that polluted some watershed in this country. We just had one very recently in NH where PFOA was found in wells in several towns. Do we do NOTHING? This is now showing up in wells. The company Textiles Coated International has been around since 1985 (LONG AFTER THE CLEAN WATER ACT WAS ENACTED). The plant where the leaching occurred has been closed for several years. Yet here we are…a new pollutant entering our water table…a chemical that shouldn’t be there…that is very very toxic. Right now the levels are low, but that could grow as the leaching spreads.
You know what else would be BETTER…renewable energy (solar or wind). I’m all for getting rid of the stranglehold the mid-east has on us with oil. But pumping more oil is not the answer. We need a multiple approaches to the problem…drilling for more oil is a very short term that has it’s own problems.
They aren’t mutually exclusive, Mike. And again, if you’re the sort of person who is happy coal is on the downswing for power generation (and I suspect you are)…you have fracked natural gas to thank for it. We could NEVER have phased out the amount of coal-fired power plants that we did, without a cheap, drop-in fuel replacement to run the steam boilers!
I often wonder if what is keeping us from having 100 MPG cars (or at least 60 MPG cars) is the low price of fuel. I’m personally glad there is pressure to increase efficiency from a source other than the price of fuel, because if the environmental cost of burning a gallon of fuel was built into the price, I think the price would be significantly higher than it is.
On top of that, every wind turbine and solar panel has to have natural gas-fired generating capacity to back them up. Wind and sun come and go, sometimes at peak electricity demand (summers are not at all windy in many prime wind turbine areas).
I’m quite certain that if Fiat were getting the same level of government subsidies that solar is getting, they would be doing very well indeed. So why not provide subsidies to people that buy little tiny cars? Creep, creep as we slide closer to the abyss. Kinda hard to stop once you start throwing money around for seemingly good ideas. Remember the first rule of economics? Unlimited wants and limited resources. Just reacting to an article today on a company that filled its roof with solar panels because they applied for a Minnesota grant and got it. A trucking company no less.
There are subsidies of a sort for small cars. In the past companies like Ford made nothing, or lost money, on small cars in order to sell enough of them to meet CAFE regs. I don’t know if that’s still the case.
There’s no question that our environment would be much better if we had other viable energy sources then Fossil Fuel. Why is that so hard to believe. So we get rid of ONE bad environment problem for another. If companies spent 1/10 the amount of money into alternative energy supplies then they have in keeping Fossil Fuel alive this problem would be solved. Or at least on the way too being solved. The ONLY reason fossil fuel is being kept alive is because of very high profit margin. Wind and Solar (and other sources) are not as profitable. Environment ALWAYS looses to PROFIT.
I don’t mean to continue this but if you think there is no money being made in solar and wind, think again. The only way solar is competitive is if it is highly subsidized. Otherwise payback is beyond the useful life of the panels. That’s what I was referring to. Payback can be around 10-15 years with the help of the government-otherwise we’re into 30 plus years.
As far as wind goes, it is now a requirement in Minnesota that the power companies pay for this, which means customers are paying for it. At any rate my BIL is involved in some farm land their family has. If the wind is up to par, they get enormous payments to lease the land for a wind mill. Even if the wind mill doesn’t go on their land, they get payments for the wind that crosses over their land. Unbelievable. So yeah there is a lot of money being thrown into wind just for the sake of having wind generators. Don’t say there ain’t no money being made on wind. It’s a boondoggle in the truest sense. Then of course it is all false economy because the power companies still need to have the excess capacity for when the mills are shut down. Again nice idea but not economically feasible on its own without picking the pockets of the power companies or taxpayers-which is us in the end.
Reread my post. I didn’t say there was no money. But oil profit is considerable more. Companies will always gravitate toward the highest profit. ALWAYS
Yeah but there really is no relationship between oil and wind and solar production except they are all energy companies. And this year there isn’t so much profit in oil production, but there is a lot of money in wind and solar.
The EPA does not arbitrarily make up pollution control laws. THey have councils which include representatives of the auto industry. The execution of a new regulation is done with the input of these representatives which finally decides on dates of implementation, effectiveness and impact on the industry. Companies are free to file complaints before they go into effect. They they are complaining after the fact and not before, tells you all you need to know. These two quotes say much too.
“We have done nothing that is illegal,” he said. “There was never any intent of creating conditions that were designed to defeat the testing process. This is absolute nonsense.”
“He characterized the dispute as whether the automaker had completely disclosed software that protects the engine, adding the company was planning updated software to address EPA concerns.”
They claim to have done nothing illegal but will still change the softwhere; that’s a concession right there.
Good morning - thank you to the folks who re-introduced some car commentary into the discussion. I wasn’t around much this weekend (gasp) but at least I came back to see fracking debate and not a whoopie cushion on my chair.
True…but the question is why isn’t there? Companies diverse themselves all the time. IBM was a company before WWI (decades before the first computer was invented).
What about the energy market? I submit to you that every kilowatt provided by solar or wind, even for only a few hours a day, is a kilowatt not generated by burning fossil fuel, causing a shift in the supply curve for energy.
Concession to the fact that the EP has a large amount of poorly-constrained power that they get to throw around like a 300-lb gorilla, perhaps. If I were a auto exec, I’d look at them chucking VW’s Oliver Schmitt in jail…and promptly agree to do their bidding, and to heck with a nuanced legal argument to the contrary. Either that, or stall for five days…
Give us time. We took the weekend off too.