John Hostettler is an odd duck. There are plenty of policies he is for that I’m against. But every so often, he does something politically tone deaf with which I sympathize on the policy level.
A month or two before the big tornado that hit the Evansville area, Hostettler voted against Katrina relief (citing, I believe, inadequate cost oversight and possibly rebuilding in flood prone areas). Today’s example is the anti-price gouging law considered by the House. As I understand it, the bill is mainly symbolic and ineffective as well as possibly redundant.
Hostettler likens the bill to price controls and claims it would lead to gas shortages and gas lines like in the 70s. His opponent, Brad Ellsworth took the opportunity to label Hostettler as a defender of Big Oil profits. I don’t think Hostettler is particularly concerned with Big Oil. I think he’s an idealogue who thinks that the “free” market is infallible. Of course, there is very little about the oil industry that resembles a free market.
Ellsworth takes the politically expedient route, given his district, of endorsing ethanol and biodiesel. Personally, I think we’re going to have to have a Manahattan Project/Apollo Program level commitment to developing effective hydrogen fuel cells.
The engineer in me finds some of the enthusiasm for fuel cells as just that, mere enthusiasm. Fuel cells in the next decade will find better applications than our automobiles. If there is a good starting point for utilizing them for motive power in our transportation system I would suggest their use as power sources for railroad locamotive traction motors. Doing so would began to knock down the price of fuel cells and create some sort of market for hydrogen.
As for our cars I think alcohol type fuels used in more or less traditional IC engines are more promising. Brazil though has displaced oil/gasoline in its automotive fleet with alcohol (produced from sugar cane). Achieving this in the US using corn as a sugar source is more problematical, but genetic modification of corn to increase sugar levels and thereby boost alchohol yields strikes me as a more economical than trying to solve the problems of economic hydrogen production (many of the proposals for hydrogen production, excepting electroloysis of water, directly produce carbon dioxide).
I find the complaints about oil company profits ironic. Few seem to want to take the direct approach of simply raising fuel taxes, though whether you tax the product or the producer’s income would seem over the long haul to reach the same conclusion. I understand that short term demand for gasoline and diesel is inelastic, but with time people would respond to higher fuel taxes, as they have in Europe over the years, by using less fuel. Higher fuel taxes would also began to divert some of the wealth flowing to the middle east (some of which finds its way into the pockets of questionable governments and individuals) into our own states’ and country’s treasury.
You are spot on about Hostettler, Doug. I have respect for him in that he votes his convictions with often little regard for the party line. Occasionally, I’ll even agree with him. Remember, he voted against granting Bush the power to act against Iraq. I disagree with him strongly for the most part though.
a Manahattan Project/Apollo Program level commitment to developing effective hydrogen fuel cells.
Sorry Doug,
But legions of true scientists not in the pay of the Exxon/Mobil or the auto industry will tell you that Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles are joke.
Basically hydrogen is an energy store not an energy source. It takes more energy to produce the hydrogen using either fossil, nuclear or renewalable energy sources than it provides. Also hydrogen is very difficult to both store and transport. The majority of working fuel cell designs have scarce materials issues. Several of them relie of precious metals like platinum. Who needs a 100,000 or even 50,000 in real dollars fuel cell vehicle for the masses that will not be available for another ten years. And even those prices are considered to be wildly optimistic by many.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_car
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
As a friend I would be careful about touting hydrogen fuel cells as an answer to the coming of peak oil. To lots of serious energy analysts see it is a sure sign that you just might be an uninformed RUBE .
While most of us men have to admit that our first sexual experiences as young teenagers were private affairs brought on by a case of over stimulation after watching a Charles Angel or Dukes of Hazzard rerun or perhaps looking at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, I am sure for Hostettler it was while in the middle of reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead .
I watched C-SPAN today, Ed Markey Democrat Massachusetts was delivering a big dish of we told you so and shut the F’ Up to the Republicans. He basically compared the situation we are in today with gas prices continuing to rise with no end sight before they cause a deep recession, to where we would be if the Republican had not blocked Liberal Democratic policies on fuel efficiency standards and gasoline taxes in the early 1990’s. Basically instead of the world being on the brink of Peak Oil today, it have been delayed by another ten years.
Believe me Markey performance had the wing-nuts going wild on the call in shows. They were screaming for drilling in ANWAR and off the scenic coasts of California and Florida. Yeah, tell that to the Republicans who have also blocked drilling off of California and
Florida. Dubya himself campaigned against drilling in the eastern gulf of Mexico to help the Jebster get reelected in 2002.
The Traditiona Media likes pretend that the reason the Democrats lost the House in 1994 was because of the petty corruptions of Jim Wright years earlier and because Dan Rostenkowski stole $30,000 in stamps. Sorry, but the wing-nuts from DuPage County Illinois I worked with up in Chicago were all going crazy over the measely 4 cent a gallon tax increase President Clinton passed to help balance the budget in 1992. Back in 1994 Rush Limbaugh was screaming about Liberals like Markey proposing 25 to 50 a cent gallon gas taxes to discourage Americans from buying larger cars, suburban sprawl and driving more. That tax revenue would have funded cutting edge energy conservation, alternative energy and balanced the budget. Yet even at 50 cents a gallon tax, gas prices in 1994 would have been well below the adjusted for inflation costs of the early 1980s.
We are in the crisis we are today because in the early 1990’s when world oil demand was around 70 million barrels per day instead of 85 and global supply was 90+ per day instead of 86-87 today, Exxon/Mobil in particular and the Auto industry lead the fight against higher fuel efficiency and gasoline taxes. In the last 15 years we have reversed progress towards higher average fuel economy. Worse the suburban largely Republican folks who are buying the SUVs and Pickups are exactly the same folks buying the larger homes farther away from work and driving more miles per year.
Truth be told, Exxon/Mobil and Big Oil saw the situation of the 1990s as one of low prices due to a lack of demand. The Oil companies were crying in their beer, that adjusted for inflation oil and gas prices were falling due to excess supply largely due to the newly brought online Alaskan, North Sea and West African oil fields, which by the way are now all in depletion. Meanwhile, they shrewdly bought up the oil reserves of other oil companies and then set about creating demand by flooding the media with false information.
Because of Big Oil, the public was told small and mid size cars are unsave, bigger heavier cars are far safer, when just the opposite is true in the most common serious crash scenarios. That the world was awash in oil and we had nothing to worry about for atleast 75-100 years. That Global Warming was a myth spread by evironmental terrorists. Back in the mid-ninties the Right-Wing media use to publish articles saying that with the end of the Cold war their were huge Saudia Arabia size oil fields waiting to be tapped in Central Asia and off the coast of Vietnam. This was a fraud, the oil fields that were discovered never compared in size to those of the Middle East, and they still remain to be produced because the political situations in those parts of the world are still so tenuous. Closer to home, I remember visiting my parents and reading editorial after editorial in the Indianapolis by right-wing think tanks promoting Americans’ desires to drive ever larger vehicles and drive more miles and against energy conservation.
Keep in mind that for the last 15 years Exxon/Mobil alone has been spending 100 million dollars influencing public opinion. Now we know Exxon paid for those editorials.
Today Exxon/Mobil and Big Oil are reaping record profits largely due to a manufactured increase in demand. Economic growth in China and India has raised prices. But some of this increased global demand has been offset by countries like Brazil, Continental Western Europe and specially the former Soviet satellite countries who used to receive subsidized oil from the USSR, that have already been conserving fuel through alternative energy and conservation. Sorry folks per capita, the major source of increased world demand for liquid energy has been the United States.
One more thing while there is a 50-75 cent a gallon futures price premium on the price of oil, business are willing to pay that price and bid up the price of oil in order to guarrantee supply. With so very limited swing production available it is a wonder that that the futures risk premium is not higer.
The best energy policy I would recommend is to remove the tax breaks on vehicle weighing more than 6000 lbs. Of course doing so would most likely kill the SUV and full size Pickup markets and plunge the US automakers into bankruptcy.
But bankruptcy for the US automakers is only a couple of years away anyway. Beyond that I would recomend very tough national license plate taxes on consumer vehicles over 5000 to 6000lbs. That will help to get the gas guzzlers off the streets ASAP. The revenue generated could be used to help pay for rising home heating bills for the poor and working class.
I also would place a floating tax in gasoline for a regionally adjusted price of $4 a gallon.
The government would collect revenue as long as the pre-tax price was below $4. The income would be used to fund a crash Apollo program towards energy self-sufficiency.
But of course all this is way beyond Hofstettler.
As for the hydrogen fuel cells, I am an uninformed rube, getting most of my information from science fiction and Wired Magazine c. 1997.
(And since llamajockey brought it up, what the heck is up with the sex in Ayn Rand’s books? In both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, the prominent sex scenes were essentially rapes that the woman decided she was really o.k. with upon further reflection. Creepy.)
Ive lived in Europe ,France and Netherlands, basically, and I was immediately struck by the efficiency side of ‘socialism'( which is the opposite of how americans look at it) In the states before anything is done to serve anybody we have to decide IF someone will make profit by doing it,and WHO will get the profit.The feasibility of an idea is the LAST concern,if any concern at all.Granted, Europe is a very compact place compared to USA, but Netherlands has a train every 30 minutes going everywhere.It’s like a country-wide commuter system.France has the most fantastic paasenger train system that makes it look science fiction to those who havent been there. The govt thinks its a good idea, the govt funds it or has it funded! Back in the 70s already I was using a credit card at otherwise CLOSED gas stations at 2 am etc. to get gas.It was truly science fiction then. All im doing is saying lets THINK of different ways to do things.. Improve gas mileage up to 50 mpg.Think of the consumer once first.
Don’t tell me all the bad things about France etc,. Im aware of those too,but lets keep topics separate for the sake of argument and understanding,and Im also aware of the negative side of socialism,to be sure.
I read all the above detailed energy solutions by llamajockey and Doug, and I thought to myself…’maybe in France they’d have a hearing,but not in USA’.
Regarding fuel taxes I would go for a minimum of $2 a gallon, brought in stages over two or three years. I don’t think $4 a gallon will do much to depress demand. As for the money raised, general deficit reduction would be in order. The market can find alternative energy sources without government funding beyond some basic research. Exxon may have an edge on Archer Daniels Midland in the ethics department.