Least anyone should think that I have totally lost my mind, I present to you, one of the chief reasons why I was never a big fan of President Barack Obama.
Jazz Shaw, who once called me a “racist dickbag” for calling out one of Obama’s lapdogs; highlights one of the reasons why I am not a huge fan of the Obama wing of the Democratic Party:
The host of Up With Chris Hayes was holding court over a panel discussion on domestic energy issues, so since that’s pretty much my field I had decided to tune in. The initial discussion had roped in quite a bit of the usual disinformation on natural gas fracking (which appeared to draw heavily on “facts” from fabulist Josh Fox’s fictional propaganda piece, Gasland). There was one industry “advocate” included who I wasn’t familiar with, but she never seemed to manage to take a stand against any of the worst of the energy witch-hunt comments being thrown around, which led to my wandering off to fry up some scrapple and eggs. But then, just as Hayes was preparing to toss to a commercial break, one quote reached my ears which quickly dragged me back to the TV.
My sense is that the price of energy is too low at some level right now, and I want to talk about that right after we take this break.
Check out the video:
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The quote is a bit long, here, but as Jazz says, it is worth the read:
Chris Hayes: We’re talking about the massive, extractive energy boom happening in America right now and how it’s transforming our politics and how that can be made to work with a sane climate policy, which is really the difficult question. Before the break I left the question on the table about the price of energy being too low right now. Basically we see this massive amount of supply has come onto the grid thanks largely to natural gas. The price has come down, and I think we generally think, “Oh, lower prices are better.” But it seems to me there’s a lot of problematic stuff about the price coming down sharply as it is right now in terms of incentives for efficiency and et cetera.
Dan Dicker: You would want the prices to go up a lot because it would drive the next stage towards renewables, and make that at least cost-effective. Algae fuel, we talk a lot about that…
C.H.: Some people talk about that.
D.D.: Yeah. The cost is about eight and a half to nine dollars a gallon compared to gasoline as it is now. You want the prices to go up to make these a little more cost effective. Drive the technology into them. Unfortunately it’s actually going quite the opposite. You talk about increased supply here in the United States. In fact, overseas demand is dropping. We are still in the midst of an economic problem in Europe. Chinese growth is going down. Indian growth seems to be going down. In this country we’ve done better in terms of efficiencies and our demands are starting to drop, so in terms of what economically you can expect, you will expect the opposite, or at least I do over the next several years, that oil prices will in fact go lower. Natural gas you can – because we have a futures market, we look forward to the future and see what people are betting the price is going to be. That doesn’t go over 5$ an MCF until 2020 according to the futures markets. So although you might want… we have to drive the renewable argument some other way, because price doesn’t look like it’s going to do it.
Frances Beinecke: Look, the only thing that’s going to change that is if we finally put a price on carbon.
C.H.: Right.
F.B.: The externals of all the fossil fuel development are not incorporated in the current price, so the environmental effects, the health effects, the consequences to communities, none of that is factored in. We have to change that, get a price on carbon, drive it up so we can promote renewables and efficiencies first and foremost.
Jazz Shaw observes the obvious here:
And for what? On Hayes’ show he even admitted that the recent surge in natural gas usage has driven carbon based emissions down to the lowest levels seen in decades. But is that enough? No. It is not. Because somebody, somewhere is still burning hydrocarbon based fuels. And that’s got to be stopped, no matter the cost to the country.
Look, I’m not saying this is the most shocking thing Chris Hayes has ever done or said, nor that it even represents some sort of low point. (I highly doubt he’ll ever top his now famous moment when he decided he was uncomfortable referring to the Honored Dead as heroes.) But there is a repeating pattern here of media spokesmodels who seem to be so out of touch with the lives, concerns and challenges facing regular Americans that one wonders if they ever leave Manhattan. And you should be disturbed by this, because there are still people who listen. Some of them even vote in Congress.
Which explains why I am not a huge fan of the far left in this Country — or in this case Chris Hayes. Because the far-left in this Country believes that we should punish anyone who does not want to pursue an agenda of renewable energy. I believe this to be wrong; not because I am some sort of shill for the big oil companies or anything sill like that. But rather because I happen to know that when you start punishing people in their wallets, they are going to be less inclined to vote for you. Renewable energy is nowhere near mass production levels at all. It is still being tested.
Now as for how this jives with my departure from the so-called “Conservative” movement; I will say this: The Conservatives have some really good ideas on fiscal policy and some of their social polices are nice too. The problem is that they seem to believe that imposing big partisan Government regulations on those who choose to organize and demand that companies respect their rights. This is just something that I cannot agree with at all. I am, after all, a comment sense type of a person, who does believe in limited Government, at all levels. This is why I turned away from the Conservative movement, for the time being. I hope they come around and get off of the extremist stupidity that has sprung up since Obama took office.
Now, as for the far-left: The reason why I really just do not get into the idiotic stuff, like this here; is because it is simply out of touch with the rest of the World. The idea that we should punish people, is just not cool in my book.
Hopefully, that all makes sense; it does to me. I am not a partisan person. I am about common sense and there seems to be a bit of a lack of that, on both sides.