Will Obama be a one term president?

I'll respond more in depth to both posts a bit later today, when I have more time, but this is particularly curious. Please expound, if you would, about the difference between eliminating a tax break and adding a new tax. How is that at all different, since in both cases you are paying a tax that you weren't earlier? This should be interesting.

 

I actually agree with Smuggler. Cap and trade is not about energy independence, and quite frankly, I'm disgusted that the Obama administration is using the BP rig explosion to promote cap and trade. At least they are based on the most recent e-mail I got from Organizing for America.

I consider myself an environmentalist at least to a point (I drive a Prius, people), but our economy is so tied in with petroleum that just taxing it, therefore making it more expensive, is not a good idea in a recession. Maybe I'm confused about what the bill will do.

I think the federal government should give grants and incentives to private companies to come up with alternative energy sources, and we need to stop putting all our energy eggs into one basket. At this point, if oil itself disappeared, the country would basically implode. I'm not a fan of being that dependent on one source. A friend who just spent a year in France has talked about how clean their skies are. They use nuclear there. Any discussion of it here gets shut down when we talk about a location--the "not in my back yard" phenomenon. Heck, I don't remember exactly where in New England this happened, but there was even a "not in my back yard" objection to a wind far. Somebody didn't like the look of the windmills.

FIDo is right about breaking the oil cycle, but just making the oil more expensive will make everything cost more right now; we need to break the cycle with something.

Let's say the federal government does give companies these grants: they will need time to come up with an efficient source (planes don't run on batteries, and they haven't invented electric Mac trucks yet either), and meanwhile, we need oil. Here's where I'm with the conservatives: I think we need to drill our own, for several reasons. One, not buying oil from countries that hate us. Two, creating American jobs. Three, we have the technology to drill without hurting the animals, if we'll use it. If the BP rig had had the type of emergency shut-off valve that Scandinavian countries use on their rigs, this never would have happened. Plus if we can drill on land, a spill is easier to contain. I like Smuggler's idea about the shale oil.

Will Obama be a one-term President? There is already talk that this could be his Iranian hostage crisis, with the public getting frustrated that he can't clean it up. I agree with FIDo about the alternatives, he didn't list any that I would vote for, but the frustration level continues to rise and there will be enough people who will vote "anybody but Obama."

 

Oh how I hate that NIMBYism. And the wind farm you're talking about, I think, since you said New England and it got attention, was the one they wanted to put in Nantucket Sound, which is near Martha's Vineyard. The Kennedys were among the opposition, which made some headlines.

 

The biggest difference is that you are simplifying things.

Removing a tax break means that you are paying a tax that is already known and on the books. Imposing a new tax (especially one as complicated as a carbon tax) requires a new regulatory scheme to go with it, and is built on top of the complexity of the existing tax and tax breaks.

Part of the point of a carbon tax is to make people realize the actual cost of their energy use. However, part of what is hiding that cost in the first place is the way it is currently being subsidized by the tax breaks. The logical way to approach that is to first remove the things that are currently hiding the true cost, and then reevaluate.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Shale oil is not a cure-all solution; for example, shale oil mining in rural Pennsylvania may have poisoned the water of hundreds of people, many of them small children, as I'm sure you're all aware.

I think anything to do with fossil fuels should be not taxed, but incentivized for "phase out". Give the oil companies tax incentives to transition to clean energy over a twenty year period, with "bonuses" for improving and improvising on the technological front, and I'll be good ol' American ingenuity can make it happen.

As far as Obama goes, so many different things will have to come into play here for him to be a one-term president. Right now the psychological cycle is "Obama-down", but there absolutely no way to insist that this will continue to be the case came November 2012.

Peace,

V-03

 

Well if you're going to do that V03, you'd want to at least cut the ethanol subsidy whilst promoting alternative fuels.

ES

 

I've never supported the ethanol subsidy, it's just a way to increase the price of corn .

 

The biggest difference is that you are simplifying things.

Removing a tax break means that you are paying a tax that is already known and on the books. Imposing a new tax (especially one as complicated as a carbon tax) requires a new regulatory scheme to go with it, and is built on top of the complexity of the existing tax and tax breaks.

Part of the point of a carbon tax is to make people realize the actual cost of their energy use. However, part of what is hiding that cost in the first place is the way it is currently being subsidized by the tax breaks. The logical way to approach that is to first remove the things that are currently hiding the true cost, and then reevaluate.[/quote]

Yeah, but complexity isn't an excuse in and of itself. That said, a carbon tax would be complicated, as in how much for CO2, how much for methane, etc.

 

I had to write a paper on this project for my environmental economics class in college. I believe it was Nantucket Sound, iirc. The locals didn't like the look of the windmills a couple miles off of the shore; it took away from the "historical" views or something along those lines. I think after a long battle they ended up not building them. In all honesty, I think this mentality just reflects an overriding position in most Americans - everyone wants something done, but no one is willing to make sacrifices (people want clean energy, but no one wants to pay more or have the plants in their hometowns).

 

It would still be much easier to regulate and administer than a cap and trade system, from everything I have read.

 

That is true. And more effective. A cap and trade adds a whole new level. Not only do you have to figure out just how malignant every single greenhouse gas is, but you have to figure out how it works, and then you get "offsets" and things like that.