Braggi
04-12-2008, 11:50 AM
https://www.vanityfa<wbr>ir.com/politics/<wbr>features/<wbr>2008/05/ (https://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/)
rfk_manifesto200805<wbr>
The Next President's First Task [A Manifesto]
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Vanity Fair
May 2008 Issue
Last November, Lord (David) Puttnam debated before Parliament an
important bill to tackle global warming. Addressing industry and
government warnings that we must proceed slowly to avoid economic
ruin, Lord Puttnam recalled that precisely 200 years ago Parliament
heard identical caveats during the debate over abolition of the slave
trade. At that time slave commerce represented one-fourth of
Britain's G.D.P. and provided its primary source of cheap, abundant
energy. Vested interests warned that financial apocalypse would
succeed its prohibition.
That debate lasted roughly a year, and Parliament, in the end,
made the moral choice, abolishing the trade outright. Instead of
collapsing, as slavery's proponents had predicted, Britain's economy
accelerated. Slavery's abolition exposed the debilitating
inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor; slavery had been a
ball and chain not only for the slaves but also for the British
economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Now creativity
and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy
launched the Industrial Revolution and inaugurated the greatest era
of wealth production in human history.
Today, we don't need to abolish carbon as an energy source in
order to see its inefficiencies starkly, or to understand that this
addiction is the principal drag on American capitalism. The evidence
is before our eyes. The practice of borrowing a billion dollars each
day to buy foreign oil has caused the American dollar to implode.
More than a trillion dollars in annual subsidies to coal and oil
producers have beggared a nation that four decades ago owned half the
globe's wealth. Carbon dependence has eroded our economic power,
destroyed our moral authority, diminished our international influence
and prestige, endangered our national security, and damaged our
health and landscapes. It is subverting everything we value.
We know that nations that "decarbonize" their economies reap
immediate rewards. Sweden announced in 2006 the phaseout of all
fossil fuels (and nuclear energy) by 2020. In 1991 the Swedes enacted
a carbon tax - now up to $150 a ton - and as a result thousands of
entrepreneurs rushed to develop new ways of generating energy from
wind, the sun, and the tides, and from woodchips, agricultural waste,
and garbage. Growth rates climbed to upwards of three times those of
the U.S.
Iceland was 80 percent dependent on imported coal and oil in the
1970s and was among the poorest economies in Europe. Today, Iceland
is 100 percent energy-independent, with 90 percent of the nation's
homes heated by geothermal and its remaining electrical needs met by
hydro. The International Monetary Fund now ranks Iceland the fourth
most affluent nation on earth. The country, which previously had to
beg for corporate investment, now has companies lined up to relocate
there to take advantage of its low-cost clean energy.
It should come as no surprise that California, America's most
energy-efficient state, also possesses its strongest economy.
The United States has far greater domestic energy resources than
Iceland or Sweden does. We sit atop the second-largest geothermal
resources in the world. The American Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of
wind; indeed, North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas alone produce enough
harnessable wind to meet all of the nation's electricity demand. As
for solar, according to a study in Scientific American, photovoltaic
and solar-thermal installations across just 19 percent of the most
barren desert land in the Southwest could supply nearly all of our
nation's electricity needs without any rooftop installation, even
assuming every American owned a plug-in hybrid.
In America, several obstacles impede the kind of entrepreneurial
revolution we need. To begin with, that trillion dollars in annual
coal-and-oil subsidies gives the carbon industry a decisive market
advantage. Meanwhile, an overstressed and inefficient national
electrical grid can't accommodate new kinds of power. At the same
time, a byzantine array of local rules impede access by innovators to
national markets.
There are a number of things the new president should
immediately do to hasten the approaching boom in energy innovation. A
carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put downward pressure on
carbon emissions is quite simply a no-brainer. Already endorsed by
Senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama, such a system would measure
national carbon emissions and create a market to auction emissions
credits. The supply of credits is then reduced each year to meet pre-
determined carbon-reduction targets. As supply tightens, credit value
increases, providing rich monetary rewards for innovators who reduce
carbon. Since it is precisely targeted, cap-and-trade is more
effective than a carbon tax. It is also more palatable to
politicians, who despise taxes and love markets. Industry likes the
system's clear goals. This market-based approach has a proven track
record.
There's a second thing the next president should do, and it
would be a strategic masterstroke: push to revamp the nation's
antiquated high-voltage power-transmission system so that it can
deliver solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy across
the country. Right now, a Texas wind-farm manager who wants to get
his electrons to market faces two huge impediments. First, our
regional power grids are overstressed and misaligned. The biggest
renewable-energy opportunities - for instance, Southwest solar and
Midwest wind - are outside the grids' reach. Furthermore, traveling
via alternating-<wbr>current (AC) lines, too much of that wind farmer's
energy would dissipate before it crossed the country. The nation
urgently needs more investment in its backbone transmission grid,
including new direct-current (DC) power lines for efficient long-haul
transmission. Even more important, we need to build in "smart"
features, including storage points and computerized management
overlays, allowing the new grid to intelligently deploy the energy
along the way. Construction of this new grid will create a
marketplace where utilities, established businesses, and
entrepreneurs can sell energy and efficiency.
The other obstacle is the web of arcane and conflicting state
rules that currently restrict access to the grid. The federal
government needs to work with state authorities to open up the grids,
allowing clean-energy innovators to fairly compete for investment,
space, and customers. We need open markets where hundreds of local
and national power producers can scramble to deliver economic and
environmental solutions at the lowest possible price. The energy
sector, in other words, needs an initiative analogous to the 1996
Telecommunications Act, which required open access to all the
nation's telephone lines. Marketplace competition among national and
local phone companies instantly precipitated the historic explosion
in telecom activity.
Construction of efficient and open-transmission marketplaces and
green-power-<wbr>plant infrastructure would require about a trillion
dollars over the next 15 years. For roughly a third of the projected
cost of the Iraq war we could wean the country from carbon. And the
good news is that the government doesn't actually have to pay for all
of this. If the president works with governors to lift constraints
and encourage investment, utilities and private entrepreneurs will
quickly step in to revitalize the grid and recover their investment
through royalties collected for transporting green electrons.
Businesses and homes will become power plants as individuals cash in
by installing solar panels and wind turbines on their buildings, and
by selling the stored energy in their plug-in hybrids back to the
grid at peak hours.
Energy expert and former CIA director R. James Woolsey predicts:
"With rational market incentives and a smart backbone, you'll see
capital and entrepreneurs flooding this field with lightning speed."
Ten percent of venture-capital dollars are already deployed in the
clean-tech sector, and the world's biggest companies are crowding the
space with capital and scrambling for position.
The president's final priority must be to connect a much smarter
power grid to vastly more efficient buildings and machines. We have
barely scratched the surface here. Washington is a decade behind its
obligation, first set by Ronald Reagan, to set cost-minimizing
efficiency standards for all major appliances. With the conspicuous
exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger'<wbr>s California, the states aren't
doing much better. And Congress keeps setting ludicrously tight
expiration dates for its energy-efficiency tax credits, frustrating
both planning and investment. The new president must take all of this
in hand at once.
The benefits to America are beyond measure. We will cut annual
trade and budget deficits by hundreds of billions, improve public
health and farm production, diminish global warming, and create
millions of good jobs. And for the first time in half a century we
will live free from Middle Eastern wars and entanglements with petty
tyrants who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president of the
Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-governmental organization that promotes
clean water throughout the world.
-------
rfk_manifesto200805<wbr>
The Next President's First Task [A Manifesto]
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Vanity Fair
May 2008 Issue
Last November, Lord (David) Puttnam debated before Parliament an
important bill to tackle global warming. Addressing industry and
government warnings that we must proceed slowly to avoid economic
ruin, Lord Puttnam recalled that precisely 200 years ago Parliament
heard identical caveats during the debate over abolition of the slave
trade. At that time slave commerce represented one-fourth of
Britain's G.D.P. and provided its primary source of cheap, abundant
energy. Vested interests warned that financial apocalypse would
succeed its prohibition.
That debate lasted roughly a year, and Parliament, in the end,
made the moral choice, abolishing the trade outright. Instead of
collapsing, as slavery's proponents had predicted, Britain's economy
accelerated. Slavery's abolition exposed the debilitating
inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor; slavery had been a
ball and chain not only for the slaves but also for the British
economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Now creativity
and productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy
launched the Industrial Revolution and inaugurated the greatest era
of wealth production in human history.
Today, we don't need to abolish carbon as an energy source in
order to see its inefficiencies starkly, or to understand that this
addiction is the principal drag on American capitalism. The evidence
is before our eyes. The practice of borrowing a billion dollars each
day to buy foreign oil has caused the American dollar to implode.
More than a trillion dollars in annual subsidies to coal and oil
producers have beggared a nation that four decades ago owned half the
globe's wealth. Carbon dependence has eroded our economic power,
destroyed our moral authority, diminished our international influence
and prestige, endangered our national security, and damaged our
health and landscapes. It is subverting everything we value.
We know that nations that "decarbonize" their economies reap
immediate rewards. Sweden announced in 2006 the phaseout of all
fossil fuels (and nuclear energy) by 2020. In 1991 the Swedes enacted
a carbon tax - now up to $150 a ton - and as a result thousands of
entrepreneurs rushed to develop new ways of generating energy from
wind, the sun, and the tides, and from woodchips, agricultural waste,
and garbage. Growth rates climbed to upwards of three times those of
the U.S.
Iceland was 80 percent dependent on imported coal and oil in the
1970s and was among the poorest economies in Europe. Today, Iceland
is 100 percent energy-independent, with 90 percent of the nation's
homes heated by geothermal and its remaining electrical needs met by
hydro. The International Monetary Fund now ranks Iceland the fourth
most affluent nation on earth. The country, which previously had to
beg for corporate investment, now has companies lined up to relocate
there to take advantage of its low-cost clean energy.
It should come as no surprise that California, America's most
energy-efficient state, also possesses its strongest economy.
The United States has far greater domestic energy resources than
Iceland or Sweden does. We sit atop the second-largest geothermal
resources in the world. The American Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of
wind; indeed, North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas alone produce enough
harnessable wind to meet all of the nation's electricity demand. As
for solar, according to a study in Scientific American, photovoltaic
and solar-thermal installations across just 19 percent of the most
barren desert land in the Southwest could supply nearly all of our
nation's electricity needs without any rooftop installation, even
assuming every American owned a plug-in hybrid.
In America, several obstacles impede the kind of entrepreneurial
revolution we need. To begin with, that trillion dollars in annual
coal-and-oil subsidies gives the carbon industry a decisive market
advantage. Meanwhile, an overstressed and inefficient national
electrical grid can't accommodate new kinds of power. At the same
time, a byzantine array of local rules impede access by innovators to
national markets.
There are a number of things the new president should
immediately do to hasten the approaching boom in energy innovation. A
carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put downward pressure on
carbon emissions is quite simply a no-brainer. Already endorsed by
Senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama, such a system would measure
national carbon emissions and create a market to auction emissions
credits. The supply of credits is then reduced each year to meet pre-
determined carbon-reduction targets. As supply tightens, credit value
increases, providing rich monetary rewards for innovators who reduce
carbon. Since it is precisely targeted, cap-and-trade is more
effective than a carbon tax. It is also more palatable to
politicians, who despise taxes and love markets. Industry likes the
system's clear goals. This market-based approach has a proven track
record.
There's a second thing the next president should do, and it
would be a strategic masterstroke: push to revamp the nation's
antiquated high-voltage power-transmission system so that it can
deliver solar, wind, geothermal, and other renewable energy across
the country. Right now, a Texas wind-farm manager who wants to get
his electrons to market faces two huge impediments. First, our
regional power grids are overstressed and misaligned. The biggest
renewable-energy opportunities - for instance, Southwest solar and
Midwest wind - are outside the grids' reach. Furthermore, traveling
via alternating-<wbr>current (AC) lines, too much of that wind farmer's
energy would dissipate before it crossed the country. The nation
urgently needs more investment in its backbone transmission grid,
including new direct-current (DC) power lines for efficient long-haul
transmission. Even more important, we need to build in "smart"
features, including storage points and computerized management
overlays, allowing the new grid to intelligently deploy the energy
along the way. Construction of this new grid will create a
marketplace where utilities, established businesses, and
entrepreneurs can sell energy and efficiency.
The other obstacle is the web of arcane and conflicting state
rules that currently restrict access to the grid. The federal
government needs to work with state authorities to open up the grids,
allowing clean-energy innovators to fairly compete for investment,
space, and customers. We need open markets where hundreds of local
and national power producers can scramble to deliver economic and
environmental solutions at the lowest possible price. The energy
sector, in other words, needs an initiative analogous to the 1996
Telecommunications Act, which required open access to all the
nation's telephone lines. Marketplace competition among national and
local phone companies instantly precipitated the historic explosion
in telecom activity.
Construction of efficient and open-transmission marketplaces and
green-power-<wbr>plant infrastructure would require about a trillion
dollars over the next 15 years. For roughly a third of the projected
cost of the Iraq war we could wean the country from carbon. And the
good news is that the government doesn't actually have to pay for all
of this. If the president works with governors to lift constraints
and encourage investment, utilities and private entrepreneurs will
quickly step in to revitalize the grid and recover their investment
through royalties collected for transporting green electrons.
Businesses and homes will become power plants as individuals cash in
by installing solar panels and wind turbines on their buildings, and
by selling the stored energy in their plug-in hybrids back to the
grid at peak hours.
Energy expert and former CIA director R. James Woolsey predicts:
"With rational market incentives and a smart backbone, you'll see
capital and entrepreneurs flooding this field with lightning speed."
Ten percent of venture-capital dollars are already deployed in the
clean-tech sector, and the world's biggest companies are crowding the
space with capital and scrambling for position.
The president's final priority must be to connect a much smarter
power grid to vastly more efficient buildings and machines. We have
barely scratched the surface here. Washington is a decade behind its
obligation, first set by Ronald Reagan, to set cost-minimizing
efficiency standards for all major appliances. With the conspicuous
exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger'<wbr>s California, the states aren't
doing much better. And Congress keeps setting ludicrously tight
expiration dates for its energy-efficiency tax credits, frustrating
both planning and investment. The new president must take all of this
in hand at once.
The benefits to America are beyond measure. We will cut annual
trade and budget deficits by hundreds of billions, improve public
health and farm production, diminish global warming, and create
millions of good jobs. And for the first time in half a century we
will live free from Middle Eastern wars and entanglements with petty
tyrants who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president of the
Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-governmental organization that promotes
clean water throughout the world.
-------