Brian A. Thomas .com

You may recall in 2000 or so, California had a bunch of blackouts. Those on the left blamed California’s so called deregulated power industry, although it wasn’t a truly deregulated (to be fair, some on the right blamed it on that too). If it was truly deregulated there wouldn’t have been a price cap for one thing. Others said California’s environmental extremist politics that stopped them from building any power plants for decades in the fastest growing state in the Union. There is a report on California’s power crisis (PDF) from Cato, in which they seem to blame the price caps and say they didn’t find any real fault with the environmental extremist. As a matter of fact, they point out, there were plants built. The bigger problem was price controls and over reliance on gas as a fuel source for the power plants, mostly price controls.
Now California has banned “dirty power.” Meaning that they will not buy power from any coal or other dirty sources. I am guessing in a day or two, we’ll see Cato and other good think tanks come out with a report on California’s plan. I agree that we should move to coal gasification power plants such as the FutureGen project as fast as possible, but to block out coal sources period in a state that is still growing is asking for troubles. Actually, we would all be better off with a faster, harder push for sources such as solar, wind and hydro power, along with more people using compact florescent, programmable thermostats (although a better heating solution is radiant floor heating which you wouldn’t really use a programmable thermostat for, at least if the radiant floor is on a mass such as concrete), and other energy saving moves. If I were to build a new house, I would make it passive solar at the very least and try to get active solar panels on the roof as well, and if there is a stream or something that could use a small scale hydro power, then all the better. Unfortunately it is sometimes hard to get zoning for wind power, though wind power in Ohio isn’t all that great anyhow… Everybody can take advantage of solar though, at least to a degree. All a moot point so far as this post goes anyhow, so back to topic…
While on the subject of politics and Cato, they have a response to Democratic senator, Jim Webb’s response to the Precedent’s State of the Union speech. They also respond to the speech directly; regarding the new tax plan for health insurance (they like it), and ethanol subsidies (they don’t like them, of course most subsidies would be rightly opposed anyhow).

Tags: Politics