Tag Archives: Republicans

Mitt Romney and His Stance on Green Energy

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“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”
—Mitt Romney (January 2012)

If you were a Republican running an election campaign to become President of the United States, your particular political ideology might mean you think global warming isn’t real, and that green energy is a bad idea and totally unnecessary in today’s economy. There’s also a chance you completely disagree with those concepts, but because you’re base of constituents and your lobbyist supporters disagree with them, you go along with them anyway. But the optimist in me hopes that presidential candidates speak true to their convictions.

So if you thought that wind energy was a joke and you didn’t want to continue supporting it  in any way whatsoever once you became President, it would make sense that you’d want to end the wind production tax credit, scheduled to expire at the end of this year. This tax credit—a benefit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated—will indeed end unless it’s extended. If it does expire, it will not only put an end to some energy that is greener than the fossil fuels Republicans seem so eager to support. It will also mean the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing and construction jobs that are supported by the wind energy sector.

Now if you were a Republican running for President of the United States and that was your perspective, what you thought was best, then I think you should come out and make a definitive statement to that effect. Let the voters know exactly where you stand on the issue. If some Americans agree with you, you’ll likely get some of their votes from that stance. If others disagree with you, you might make it more likely they’ll vote for your opponent. But either way, people will clearly know where you stand on the issue.

Mitt Romney, the most likely candidate for the position of Republican running for President has hinted that he wants to end federal tax support for wind energy—along with other forms of green energy—but alas, he hasn’t made a crystal-clear statement to that effect. We certainly don’t yet know if he thinks it should expire at the end of the year as is currently the timeline for its fate, or if it should perhaps be phased out more slowly. (For the record, President Obama has made it very clear that he believes the tax credit should be extended indefinitely.)

In other words, Romney is taking the passive-aggressive approach to the issue. He doesn’t want to support extending the tax credit, but he doesn’t want to look like the outright villain and state that he wants it to expire when the year is up.

The reason this approach is passive-aggressive is because of the uncertainty associated with the lack of a decision on the issue. It means that developers are having a difficult time planning for the future beyond 2012. The effects are already being felt, and the website ThinkProgress has been reporting extensively on the losses that are being felt. In Pennsylvania, 165 workers at a turbine manufacturing-company lost their jobs. In Ohio, a $20 million dollar project was cancelled, losing up to 200 construction jobs in the process. In Arkansas, a $100 million wind turbine production facility has been stalled.

For companies that still plan to continue their business, one solution is to export their products to the many nations around the world that are expanding their own wind sectors. But many companies believe they’ll be about 18 months behind in production while waiting for Congress’s verdict of the tax credit extension.

As the American Wind Energy Association has demonstrated, wind energy has been good for the US. Since 2012, it has brought $20 billion in annual private investment and helped to support 75,000 jobs, making the US one of the most competitive countries in the world when it comes to the wind industry. If the tax credit isn’t extended at the end of the year, however, it will lead to an estimated 37,000 lost jobs in the following year.

What’s saddest of all when it comes to Mr. Romney and his attitude toward green energy is that he vehemently defends tax credits for the oil and gas industry. If he truly believed in good old-fashioned capitalism and free market enterprise, I would think he would pledge to support all industry equally and let the market sort out in the end which it thinks is best. But he clearly wants to maintain an advantage for the established fossil fuel industry, ignoring scientists all over the world who argue that renewable sources of energy need to be developed, and quickly.

If Mitt Romney is a real man true to his convictions, he should make it clear what he thinks about extending the tax credit, rather than using his passive-aggressive approach to slowly devastate an industry without ever having to take the blame once the damage is done.

I hope American voters will see who has spoken more truly about his convictions come November and re-elect the man with a vision about where the US needs to be in the 21st century, rather than the one who believes so strongly in business-as-usual, but doesn’t even have the guts to make that clear to the voters.

Republican Efforts to Combat Global Warming

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“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

You don’t have to look too hard in the press to realize that Republicans are more likely to deny global warming or climate change compared with Democrats or undecided voters. As I had posted in a previous blog, they’re also the least likely to start to believe the evidence. As has been witnessed over the last decade, while Democrats and Independent voters have shown steadily increasing percentages who believe the evidence for global warming, the Republican believers have decreased over that same time period, from 49 to 29 percent.

However, perhaps there’s some hint that even Republicans are becoming tired of  fighting the truth. Former congressman Bob Inglis is urging his fellow conservatives “to stop denying that humans are contributing to global warming.” Inglis, who was defeated in 2010 by the Tea Party, has launched an initiative through George Mason University. Entitled the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, its purpose is to push “conservative solutions to America’s energy and climate challenges.”How will it do this exactly? It plans to push for a carbon tax. By creating higher taxes on gasoline and carbon pollution, it’s hoped this will be part of the solution.

Here’s a video with Bob Inglis and Art Laffer, a former economic advisor for Ronald Reagan, explaining the concept further.

A tax on carbon has often been suggested as one way to deal with our addiction to fossil fuels, but it’s not necessarily a good way. One criticism (and one that usually comes from those on the right wing of the political spectrum) against a carbon tax is that it’s simply another way to tax the rich. Since the wealthiest people consume the most fossil fuels generally, conservatives (who don’t tend to like taxes in general) tend to be critical of a carbon tax. Bob Inglis deals with this by planning to cut income tax so that overall it’s revenue-neutral.

Another problem with a carbon tax is that the funds generated by the tax aren’t necessarily earmarked for use toward the solutions needed to combat the problem of increasing emissions. If the funds generated were put directly into the research and development of renewable sources of energy say, or toward the planting of green spaces to help replace the forests around the globe that we’re destroying, that might actually help. But the funds usually aren’t destined for such projects but rather are put into the large pot known as the global budget.

In other words, the only possible solution to be gained from a carbon tax if the revenue generated isn’t going into green solutions directly is to serve as a deterrant to using fossil fuels because of the higher costs associated as a direct result of that tax. And if income tax is going to be cut to compensate for it as Inglis advocates, I’m really not sure his idea is going to create any revolutionary solutions.

But what’s more important to me than his proposal at this point is that here’s a Republican urging his fellow Republicans to take their heads out of the sand with respect to global warming, accept the evidence and look toward solutions that can fit within their conservative ideologies. And he’s not even the only one. He has the support of Gregory Mankiw who is Mitt Romney’s economic advisor for his current presidential campaign, and had previously served as the chief economist for President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.

I believe finding climate solutions that will fit well with conservative ideologies is easier said then done, but I still consider this a step in the right direction. Now to move onto bipartisan cooperation.

Making Progress After All

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“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”
—Khalil Gibran

A new study from the Brookings Institute has revealed some interesting—and encouraging—findings. More people are becoming convinced that global warming is real. That doesn’t necessarily translate that they believe human activities have anything to do with it. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Participants in the survey were asked the following question: “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades?” Sixty-five percent answered yes, a climb of a few percentage points compared with the same time last year. In fact, back in the Fall of 2008, the number who were convinced was higher at 72 percent but steadily to a low of 52 percent in the Spring of 2010.

There’s been a steady rise since, suggesting that there’s been a rebound in the number of people believing the evidence. This is likely due in part to the recent record-breaking temperatures seen all over the continental US. It’s amazing how when it’s in your face, it’s hard to deny.

 

One interesting finding is how people’s beliefs continue to follow party lines. For example, the number of Democrats convinced of global warming has increased from 73 to 81 percent in the past year, while Republicans have remained steady at 42 percent. (See my blog on cultural cognition to understand more about why that is, even though the facts and science shouldn’t be so easily influenced by political views.)

What is most encouraging from the survey is that the percentage of Independents believing in global warming has increased—from 52 to 72 percent this past year. This is especially heartening because the Independent group is least likely to be influenced by cultural cognition and most likely to be open-minded with respect to the information it is exposed to.

This suggests that those of us trying to educate the public on the facts surrounding global warming and climate change are doing our jobs at least somewhat effectively. Also that global warming is so evident now to people who are able to remember back just a few decades ago that most of them have a tough time denying its existence.

Hopefully the next step will soon follow: convincing people that the activities of our species such as combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation and agriculture are playing a part in the problem.

And then it’s on to convincing society that we need to do something about it. It’s a long road ahead….