Radical Transparency

I wrote about Dickensian villain Don Blankenship yesterday on A More Perfect Market, and, as usual, I watched 15-20 minutes of my day disappear as I struggled to title the post.

I went with Gotta Love the Man's Mustache, Though.

And it was kind of a stretch of a title, because, honestly, at first, I wasn't really all that impressed with his mustache.  I mean it was definitely exciting to see that he had one, exciting to know that he was not afraid to rock sculpted facial hair.  But, at a glance, the mustache really didn't look like anything special.

At a glance.

Look closer, however, and notice the attention to detail.  Dude clearly does some serious maintenance.  Perfect straight lines from the corners of the mouth to the nostrils.  Extraordinary symmetry.  A classic trapezoid.

And it is totally weird that I'm writing this and thinking this and look at blurry far away pictures of coal executives and assume.  But I'm convinced that these observations are not only truths but extremely important truths to acknowledge and spread.

The More Perfect Union speech in Philadelphia was a beautiful thing, but I think this is the Campaign 2008 moment that'll stick with me longest.

I'll remember it for two reasons.

A. I think it's important to keep in mind that inflated tires would have just as much oil import relief impact as expanded drilling.  Neither would do much, but nor would either be entirely trivial.  And the fact that something simple and inexpensive and habitual like tire inflation can be non-trivial is very cool.  But the big lesson, I think, is that the people our political system tends to choose to lead our government are not well equipped to deal with huge, long term problems like the fact that the world economy depends heavily on a scarce fuel that both earns big money for dangerous people and the use of which does terrifying damage to the natural systems on which we depend for food and breath and wonder.  They debate largely symbolic issues like tire gauges vs. Alaskan drilling, not big fundamental energy questions, and they do it because we make our decisions based on those symbolic issues, and that's a bummer. 

B. A lot of people in this country do take pride in being ignorant, and that's both dangerous and sad.  Seeing Obama call them out, however, is hopeful.  If our leaders are going to participate in solving those huge, long term problems, they'll have to be more than just populist mouthpieces.  They'll have to be better than the rest of us: calm in crisis, selfless, and open to radical new ideas.  Condemning the anti-intellectual (anti-knowledge, anti-learning, anti-curiosity) attitude is a good step.

In response to the response to my first comment:

http://blog.recycled-energy.com/2008/07/07/the-hare-and-the-tortoise/

http://jdegrazia.posterous.com/inflation-comment

That does make sense. Although I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "shifting resources around."

Basically, you're saying that the government's fear of higher prices means that utilities will make less money and thus invest less in new generation and T&D infrastructure. And, while it's not necessarily a bad thing to keep bureaucratic, status quo loving utilities from deciding the best ways to deal with increasing demand, the wires (and plants?) that the utility investment dollars would build could be helpful in the creation of an infrastructure better capable of integrating distributed generation.

Did I read correctly?

If so, do we need the utilities to help do (or enable) the shifting?

More importantly, however, what is the shifting and how do we make it happen (with or without the utilities' cash and/or blessing)?

In response to:

http://blog.recycled-energy.com/2008/07/07/the-hare-and-the-tortoise/

Any idea how much this costs now and how much it might cost 10 years from now if things continue?

I ask because I wonder at what point this situation starts to affect government spending, national debt, and inflation significantly, affect them to a degree that it becomes glaringly noticeable.

Here's how I understand things (I realize that I don't know nearly enough to be sure about this, but, now that I've added this disclaimer, I feel ok throwing it out there):

If the cost to produce power is higher than the price consumers pay, then the government is subsidizing, covering the portion of the cost it's afraid to let consumers cover themselves.  In theory, the government is using tax revenues to pay for that subsidy.  But, what with the war, other spending black holes, and politicians' fear of raising taxes, tax revenues can't cover everything, and the government is borrowing money to pay for the subsidies. And once the borrowing gets out of control, the government has to print more money to pay off its debts.  Printing more money, of course, means inflation, which means that dollars are less scarce and thus less valuable, and that's a bummer.

So, again, my questions are: How much money are these subsidies costing?  And might it, at some point anyway, be enough that it'll start getting attention enough to hold politicians accountable for cowardly pandering to short term interests?