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On Your Mark, Get Ready, Set....Stop on Obama and Energy
On a whim I vegetated in front of CSPAN for part of the afternoon, moderately interested in the cabinet confirmation hearings that were being re-broadcast. On the (moderately) hot/ pleasantly warmed seat: Steven Chu, Obama's pick for DoE sec'y.
He seems like a smart guy, articulate, and appropriately wonkish. I was bothered, however, by his answers to a few questions.
On drilling in Alaska: it's a go, as a part of our new energy plan (or maybe he was just placating the Senator from Alaska)
On "clean coal": significant resources will be invested to make it cleaner (especially as all those other horrible dirty countries will be using coal anyway, we may as well make sure it's clean (and sell the technology while we're at it))
On ethanol: do you even have to ask
He seems like a smart guy, articulate, and appropriately wonkish. I was bothered, however, by his answers to a few questions.
On drilling in Alaska: it's a go, as a part of our new energy plan (or maybe he was just placating the Senator from Alaska)
On "clean coal": significant resources will be invested to make it cleaner (especially as all those other horrible dirty countries will be using coal anyway, we may as well make sure it's clean (and sell the technology while we're at it))
On ethanol: do you even have to ask
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It's much easier for a truly intelligent person to placate--pander to, if you will--a body of lesser collective intelligence (Steven Chu vs the US Senators) than it is for a person of marginal intelligence trying to convince a body of greater collective intelligence that he's their leader (G W Bush vs the people of the United States of America).
January 17, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
On "clean coal": significant resources will be invested to make it cleaner (especially as all those other horrible dirty countries will be using coal anyway, we may as well make sure it's clean (and sell the technology while we're at it))
Does this not make sense to you?
The long-term answer is the most efficient transmission system possible, followed by porting the renewable/non-extracted sources' power from the wastelands where those sources predominate to the cities where people actually live. Until then, people will reach for the biggest bang for their buck, and that's coal both here and in China, which is much less inclined to take precautions against environmental damage than us.
On ethanol: do you even have to ask
If it involves feedstocks, no. If it involves Asian grasses that can thrive in soil poorly suited for staple crops, then why isn't that worth examining?
January 17, 2009 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink