From TCExtra.com
Energy and economics
By DIANNE ENGLEKE
03/11
MILLBROOK — “Capitalism holds the answer to our energy problems,” said Robert Kennedy Jr. in a talk Friday, Feb. 19, at Millbrook’s Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, “not the corporate crony capitalism of today but the true free market capitalism that eliminates waste, enriches all and is inherently more democratic. It’s that crony capitalism that puts corporate interests over the public interest and is at the root of our modern crises.”
In his introduction of Kennedy, William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute, said that “Kennedy is a provocative speaker” and added “people either love or hate him. No one has more passion for the environment or is more articulate.”
As chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper, Kennedy worked for more than 25 years to protect the 2,000-square-mile watershed extending up into the Catskill Mountains. Widespread mercury contamination was found in the water despite a century of legal protection from pollution. This airborne contamination was, and still is, principally from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest. There is no safe level of mercury, with signs of mercury poisoning found throughout the food chain, including in humans.
In our world of corporatism, Kennedy said, the coal industry and the utilities that own the polluting coal-fired power plants are major contributors to political campaigns, attempting to buy the ability to write the regulations under which they’ll operate, and to determine the subsidies that keep them so profitable. Coal and oil companies receive subsidies far in excess of those going to the more benign alternative energy sources. The fossil fuel producers also have unrestricted access to the national grid that carries electric energy to consumers. This energy playing field continues to be uneven with alternative energy producers needing an upgraded grid for long-range transmission.
Kennedy was optimistic that, with the right political pressure, enough money would be invested in the new Smart Grid and that investment would make far more environmental and economic sense than a return to nuclear power. Despite a belief in the reality of global warming and the climate change crisis, Kennedy did not favor nuclear power. Huge amounts of fossil fuel are needed to provide the uranium necessary to fuel the nuclear plants; and the plants are not clean in their discharges nor is there a solution to the safe disposal of the radioactive waste. The idea of power too cheap to meter is untrue, said Kennedy. Insurance companies are resistant to insuring these plants, leaving the taxpayers with the bill. Kennedy called a return to nuclear power “a catastrophically expensive way to boil a pot of water.”
The performance of the media in informing the public on environmental and economic issues frustrated Kennedy. All sides of an issue can be seen as equally valid, with one dissenting voice given as much weight as thousands of affirmative ones. An example of this was the equal weight given to the global warming naysayers as to the thousands of peer-reviewed papers substantiating the fact of global warming.
The canard that environmental protection was always at odds with sound economic policy was another example of the media oversimplifying issues and creating conflict where there need not be any. Kennedy said he felt that the responsible use and care of shared environmental resources should be the ethical framework of true democratic capitalism.
Despite his ongoing concern over corporatism, Kennedy said he saw a bright energy future for entrepreneurs, both on the global scale and in the individual backyard. Small individual windmills, solar panels and geothermal will give consumers the promise of lower energy prices and even energy independence.
One interesting new undertaking mentioned by Kennedy was Better Place, an electric car company based in Israel. The company’s goal is to have every car on the road in Israel be electric with a full network of battery charging and switching stations, while minimizing the environmental impacts and costs of the changeover. This ambitious undertaking was well underway, said Kennedy, and could serve as a template for other countries.
The scheduled talk ran longer than planned, leaving time for only a few questions, one of which was on the climate change bill now in the United States Senate. Kennedy said he thought that the proposed cap and trade provision could work, as could a carbon tax proposed in other legislation. The important thing, he said, was to reduce carbon emissions and to do it now.
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