Let’s Hope We Don’t Get the Government We Deserve

By SAM URETSKY

It was Adlai Stevenson, among others, who said, “In a democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve.” There are two groups of people who have been remarkable accurate in their interpretation of modern issues, and it’s just our luck that they turn out to be Keynesian (and neo-Keynesian) economists and climate scientists. Consider John Boehner’s recent quote: “Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change. But I am astute enough to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs. That can’t be the prescription for dealing with changes in our climate.”

Now the obvious fact is that we’ve wasted too much time to accomplish all we’d like in terms of climate change, and given the nature of our government we might as well throw up our hands, or possibly just throw up. According to the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change fifth assessment report (Approved Summary for Policymakers 11/1/2014) “Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.”

It isn’t necessary to be a scientist to see the effects of climate change and, anyway, most scientists aren’t climate scientists, but we’ve seen the erratic weather conditions that the climate scientists predicted. Also, it shouldn’t be necessary to figure out that if we keep pouring tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere something is going to change. Yes, climate change can be a natural phenomenon – the ice ages occurred long before the internal combustion engine – but that doesn’t mean we have no responsibility or should just ignore what’s happening. The fact is combating climate change will create more jobs, not fewer.

One of the more obvious job creators is the development of the fuel cell (hydrogen powered) car. This is one case where President Bush was right and Obama was wrong, and while the government cut back on fuel cell research, the automobile manufacturers continued to invest in the technology. Unlike electric cars, fuel cell vehicles have the same range as gasoline powered cars, and can be refueled as quickly as gasoline or diesel vehicles. While it’s true that now most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, it can also be produced by electrolysis of water.

In any major technological change there are winners and losers, but adapting to a world without fossil fuels is likely to create more jobs than it costs. Gas stations will have the be replaced with hydrogen filling stations and oil refineries with hydrogen generating plants. Oil drillers may not see much change – they can just keep going in order to tap geothermal power. There may even be a place for the coal miners in Kentucky, replacing the mountains that have been destroyed by strip mining. According to the web site Renewable Energy World, Dr. Hui Hu of Iowa State University has been studying the impact of hilly terrain on wind farms, and according to one report, found that on hills, wind recovers its power potential more quickly than on level surfaces, allowing closer spacing of turbines. Prof. Hu was quoted as saying “That means for the same acre of land you can put more wind turbines, and thus [harvest] more energy, out of a given project.” Along with expansion of energy generation we’ll need increased and improved energy storage, but IHS Technology has estimated that the solar energy storage market will grow by a factor of 10 in the next four years. Far from costing jobs, saving the planet planet will be a source of jobs for generations to come – full time jobs paying a living wage, not only in construction but also in research and engineering. It’s too late to reverse climate change, but we can keep it from getting worse.

And with that in mind, on Nov. 14, the House of Representatives voted 252 to 161 to approve a bill that would direct the federal government to move forward on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Anyway, an infrastructure program of this scope would increase the Federal deficit. As Speaker Boehner also said “you can’t spend your way out of a recession.” He should have prefaced that with “I’m no economist but ...”

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living on Long Island, N.Y. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015

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