Energy. Its the thing that powers our world.

In order for things to work, you must feed them. Humans need food, thats our energy source, but what feeds the things essential to a modern human society? What is essential to a modern human society? Well, beyond our food and water, fueling our bodies, electricity, transportation, and heating are the three most crucial energy intensive aspects of our lives. You might not often think about what turns on the lights when you flip a switch, or what makes the TV, the computer, the toaster, the microwave, the refrigerator, the washer, the drier, the fan, the phone, etc turn on, but its electricity that comes from any number of sources. Electricity must be generated, transmitted, and distributed before it can help power your residential, commercial, or industrial buildings. Roughly two thirds of the cost of your electricity is found in the generation phase. You can generate electricity a number of ways. You can burn ancient plant and animal fossils to produce steam that spins a generator, which creates an electric current. This is known as fossil fuel burning. The fossil fuels we burn for electricity are coal, natural gas, and on rare occasions, oil. Fossil fuels are the oldest way to generate electricity, and are quite popular because the US has a vast reserve of domestic coal and natural gas. With the coal and natural gas being found at home, the cost of generation is lower and with the supply being high, the supply-demand curve further reduces the price. This is why, historically, fossil fuels have been so cheap, effective, and popular for Americans. However, there are two big problems with fossil fuels. As you know plants breathe in CO2 and exhale O2, much as we inhale O2 and exhale CO2. Thus, whenever you are burning ancient fossils of plants and animals, you are releasing CO2 into the air. Theres basically a fixed amount of CO2 on earth, and at any given time more or less of it is found in the atmosphere. When more is in the atmosphere the earth gets warmer and vice versa, because CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps exiting infrared radiation. A whole lot of CO2 that was not in the atmosphere and not headed for the atmosphere any time soon (the CO2 sequestered in these ancient plant and animal fossils) is now being dumped up there. This happens as we burn fossil fuels at a higher and higher rate to meet the larger and larger energy needs of more and more people. So, who cares, right? It gets a little warmer, big deal.well not exactly. You see, when you look at the history of earths climate you begin to understand a lot of very important big picture patterns. The earth has been around 4.6 billion years. Humans and apes had their most recent common ancestor about 6 million years ago. Humans were anatomically equal to what we are today about 200,000 years ago. Some of our ancestors left Africa about 60,000 years ago. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Human civilization showed up around 6,000 years ago. Over the course of all these years the climate is always changing. There are a number of things that change the climate (solar irradiance patterns, tectonic plate shifts, oceanic patterns, volcanic activity patterns, greenhouse gas patterns, the Milankovich cycles, just to name a few) Some of these changes are cyclical/predictable, while some are random. Some are short term, while others are long term. Some are localized, and some are global. Right now, were sitting in a period known as the Holocene. The annual average global temperature during the Holocene ranges from the low to mid 13sC to the low to mid 15sC.

Before the Holocene there was an ice age and after it there will be an ice age (thats driven by the orbit around the sun, the tilt of our axis, and the wobble of the tilt going through their long term patterns, otherwise known as the Milankovich cycles). Just as human civilization wouldnt be able to thrive in an ice age (where annual global average temps would be in the 6-12C range), it wouldnt be able to thrive in the opposite, a greenhouse planet. (Where the annual global average temps would be in the 16-25C range, usually sitting around 20-25C). This is because, whatever the global temperatures are, the climate is different. Climate determines what kind of food grows where to what extent. It determines where it rains, when, and how much. It determines where there is water and where there is not. It determines where diseases develop and travel. It determines where storms hit, what kind, what time of year, and what severity. It determines where wildfires start and how long they burn. It determines how high or low the oceans get. It determines how acidic the oceans are. It determines where droughts hit, how large they are and how long they last. It determines the same for floods. It determines how the ocean currents and jet stream flow. It basically determines everything crucial to a species potential for survival and thriving. When electricity (and shortly thereafter cars and planes) showed up the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere was 280ppms (parts per million). Over the past 100 years or so, that number has gone up to 400ppms. This means instead of 280/1,000,000 fractions of the air being CO2, now its 400/1,000,000 fractions. That might not sound like a big deal, but during that time the global average annual temperature has gone from about 13.7C to 14.5C. The amazing thing is that over this time the other factors that determine climate aside from greenhouse gases (remember those things like the sun, the Milankovich cycles, the oceans, volcanic patterns, etc) were doing things to make the earth cooler. Plus, the vast majority of the warming has come during the past half century, as the number of people using electricity and cars around the globe has skyrocketed. This all demonstrates that even as some other important factors continue to trend cooler, we are more than offsetting them with the amount of greenhouse gases we add to the atmosphere. With the amount of greenhouse gas emissions increasing future temperature rises hold the great likelihood of being larger and more rapid. Theres not much wiggle room left. Remember, once you start to get up in the low to mid 15sC, we leave the conditions of the Holocene (the conditions that produced and contained the 6,000 years of human civilization we know as written history). After that, it becomes warm enough to trigger these things known as tipping points. This is where you have a rapid rising of the temperature up to levels that takes us away from the current big picture pattern of ice age for about 100,000 years, then stable periods like the Holocene for 15,000 or so years, repeat, repeat, repeat. Instead, wed end up in an interglacial (i.e. no ice in the Arctic or Antarctica year round) greenhouse planet world. The temperature would be 20-25C and just stay there. It would be just as bad for humans as a permanent ice age except the opposite end of the spectrum. As it was, we were going to have a few thousand years to continue enjoying our Holocene and by the end of that we probably would have long figured out how to leave earth and go live somewhere else to continue the thriving of our species. But now, we have the very real possibility of very

quickly brining about a world where the thriving of civilization is not possible well within the next 100-150 years, or even slightly sooner. We wouldnt want to do anything to trigger a premature ice age, so we shouldnt want to do anything that would trigger a greenhouse planet. They are equally just as bad for humanity, and its really our choice. We can avoid the greenhouse planet and wait for the next ice age several thousands of years from now, or we can bring on the bad times within the next century or so. Its not that humans wont survive. Its just that 7 billion plus people living the sort of civilized, extraordinarily high quality of life, super-species dominating the planet kind of life, would no longer be a possibility. Weve been in this pattern of ice age for 100,000 years, to more Holocene-like world for a good 2-3 million years. Thus, humans have lived through bad times many times before. The thing though is that our brains have only been what they are today for the past 200,000 or so, which means we only held the potential to build up civilization for that long. And the worlds climate had only been in between ice ages two times since then (this being the second of the two). During the first, all of humanity was in east Africa, and that part of the globe wasnt conducive to developing modern agriculture during these good periods so we didnt start it the first time. However, the second time, some of us were up in the fertile creasant latitude, so the seeds of what we have today started to grow. The point is, if there had been the possibly for a human civilization built up in between each ice age, and we built them, they all would have had extraordinary collapses when each new ice age hit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, our one and only human civilization we have today would take a massive hit if we do end up producing the warm equivalent of an ice age (a greenhouse planet). Ice ages start when the temperature dips a little down below 13C and then a series of negative feedback loops quickly plummet the planet into a full ice age (down in the 6-8C range). The opposite happens when you get too far up above 15C. (up into the 20-25C range). So, this dumping of all this CO2 into our atmosphere is very problematic, but electricity is very crucial to the very quality of life the climate change produced by global warming threatens to destroy. Is this, then, a catch-22? Thankfully, the answer is no. There are other ways to generate electricity aside from burning fossil fuels to generate steam to spin a generator. What are these other ways? Well, sticking with the steam spinning the generator concept, we have the heat we can generate using nuclear technology. Beyond that we have biomass energy, where you could burn low carbon foods, grass, and the likes to generate the steam needed. Theres also a steady state level of heat contained beneath the surface of earth that you could drill for and bring up in the form of pure steam, known as geothermal energy. Moving away from the steam concept, there are ways to harness kinetic energy. The wind moves, as does water. Thus, if you build wind turbines or hydro dams you can capture the kinetic energy of the wind or waters movement to spin the generator and make electricity. You also have that big thing in the sky that heats our planet. The sun is absolutely loaded with energy, and using PV solar panels you can capture the energy of the sun to make electricity. Hydropower, wind, solar, and geothermal are considered renewable energy because you can keep reusing them forever. I suppose technically there is a point billions of years down the

road when the sun will first fry away our water, end our wind, and then explode, turning earth into an icy rock thereby eliminating hydro, wind, solar, and then geothermal potential in that order, but given that its billions of years off in the future, we consider these four things to have an endless, renewable supply forever. Nuclear is not renewable in the sense a power plant has about a 60 year life span, but in theory the price is fixed, as you could figure out how much nuclear energy you need and then keep rebuilding the exact same kind of plants on a 60 year scale for the same prices adjusted for inflation. Biomass is sort of pseudo-renewable, as we could theoretically figure out how to level off global energy and food demands. Then we could calculate how much biomass energy and food we need per 12 months, and then use agricultural technology advancements to ensure we produce that much food each year (of course, that would be on the average, storing extra in high yield years, and taking from our storage in low yield years). However, that would be quite difficult. Thus, we dont consider nuclear or biomass renewable. Of course, the big problem is the one thing all things come back to: money. Understandably, people want their electricity to be as cheap as its ever been. Even if you were to break through the scientific ignorance and psychological/ideological denial of many leaders who simply refuse to look at the issue of climate as anything more than some hoax designed by government to steal away your freedom by taking over the energy industry, it still wouldnt matter. If the price of electricity were going to go up if we used less fossil fuel burning to get it (and down if we used more) they would still keep on doing anything they could to promote more fossil fuel burning. Thats because politicians like power and the acquisition of power takes votes. Is a person today really going to care if the world will suck in 100 years due to climate change? Yes, but not to the extent that theyd rather have less money for themselves and their families because their electric bills went up. Thus, they vote for the people that get them cheaper electric bills, not rosier futures for their great-grandkids. Heres the great thing, though. This might come as a shocker to most of you, but the second problem with fossil fuel electricity (beyond the first problem of CO2 emissions) is that its already more expensive than non-fossil fuel electricity. This is because of two things: something known as externalities as well as the finite nature of non-renewable resources. Externalities makes fossil fuel electricity more expensive than non-fossil fuel electricity right now, and the finite nature of fossil fuels means the price discrepancy is constantly widening. So, what are externalities? Well, the thing is climate change costs money. As the world gets warmer and things change, you might see your electric bill and think, this energy is cheap, but you dont realize that cheap energy is costing you lots of money all over the place. Food? Costs more (because it becomes harder to grow through larger, more unpredictable, longer lasting droughts and floods) Water? Costs more (ice melts sooner, droughts last longer, etc) Illness? Goes up, and becomes more severe (spread of viruses, bacteria, fungi, mosquitoes, allergens, etc), meaning cost of healthcare goes up. Taxes? Well, have fun paying for the cleanup effort from all kinds of record storm damage, record wildfire damage, larger farm subsidization required, etc, etc. As the warming becomes larger and larger, and happens quicker

and quicker, the cost of externalities goes up more and quicker. Then you have the finite nature of things like coal and natural gas. As the worlds population grows and the percentage of the world population being lifted out of poverty grows, the demand for energy goes up and up. Meanwhile, as we use more energy, less and less coal and natural gas remains. Its simple supply and demand. You keep producing more and more so that supply stays far enough ahead of demand, but as the remaining supply lessens the cost of production goes up. That means fossil fuel companies start requiring subsidies. You pay the subsidizes (taxes). Basically, you pay for the electricity itself, which appears to stay the same price, while more and more of your taxes go to the companies that get you that electricity, so that they can continue to stay at a position on the supply-demand curve that makes the price on the bill stay the same. You pay more and more all the time without realizing it. Eventually, we end up reaching something known as peal-coal, peak-oil and peak-gas. This is the point where demand got so high and the amount left low enough that additional production would just be too expensive, so the amount of a given resource like coal, gas, or oil that is being produced at the time of the peak actually begins to decline with time to keep the price the same. In other words, once you reach peak coal for example, you either continue to produce the same amount of coal and see prices for it go up and up, or you just produce less and less coal, selling it for the same price, leaving more and more people without coal energy. Once you reach peak fossil fuels either the price skyrockets or the supply plummets and neither scenario is good. Remember the oil crises in the late 70s? That had nothing to do with peak oil (peak oil will hit a few decades from now), but the results of that time when there wasnt enough oil (the skyrocketed prices, the huge gas lines, the panic, etc) is what peak oil will look like, and peak coal and peak gas will produce that same sort of price, supply panic for electricity and heating when we reach those peaks. Peaks are inevitable with nonrenewable resources. So, when it comes to fossil fuel energy, one of two things will happen over the course of the next century. Either we will hit all three peaks when not enough remains and there will be a huge energy crisis/panic that brings society to a halt, or we will first completely, irreversibly destroy the stable climate we have before the peaks all hit, plummeting the future of society into a very dark place. So, these are the two big problems with fossil fuels. They are problems we cant wish away. Eventually, there will just be too much CO2 in the air for our climate to support the kind of life we currently enjoy, and eventually there will just be too little coal, oil, and gas remaining to keep the cost of energy where it is today (and we already pay much more than we think in the form of externalities). We cant make fossil fuels contain any less CO2 by just hoping that will magically happen, we cant make fossil fuel externalities cost any less by just hoping that will magically happen, and we cant make fossil fuel supplies grow any larger by just hoping they will magically reappear after we burn them. We have a problem. Its a problem right now, and within a few short generations its going to be a global society-halting kind of problem both environmentally and economically. If we want to avoid that sort of environmental and economic co-collapse for our grandkids and great-grandkids, all while lowering the true, fully discoled cost

of energy today, and avoid it rising on us and our kids as we move forward, we have to act. So, how do we act? We cant act as the far-right or the far-left want us to act, because those plans dont work. The far-right wants to take this magical, wishing approach of doing nothing. They want to keep thinking, hey maybe climate change wont destroy our environment over the next century, and hey, maybe well just keep magically making more fossil fuels appear with each new generation. Meanwhile, the far left wants us to start imposing all kinds of economically damaging short term band-aids to the problem. They propose a sort of all-out war designed to end all fossil fuels, now, now, now. They have regulations set up designed to limit the productivity of power plants, shut down power plants, and prevent new plants. Thats all fine and well, but it doesnt accomplish anything. Its sort of like how the far-right goes after abortion. They try to systematically regulate abortion clinics out of business without ever addressing the cause of the abortion epidemic. Instead of attacking abortion, go promote contraceptive care, sex education to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and strengthen the social safety net and adoption culture to discourage abortion when unwanted pregnancies occur. Instead of attacking coal, oil, and natural gas, we need to encourage development, production, and consumption of clean energy, while discouraging the consumption of dirty energy. Through the whole process, we also need to realize that, yes someday climate change and the non-renewable nature of fossil fuels will require we use none of them, but that day is not tomorrow, next week, next year, or even 25 years from now. This is a process, a transition, not a demolition and rebuild. In order to keep a healthy balance of the avoidance of future dangers, and the continuation of current prosperity and energy security, we need to be smart, not reactionary. How do we do this? Well, first off, lets talk about what doesnt work. Cap and trade doesnt work. Thats because both the cap and the trade portion of the law are incredibly flawed. The cap puts limits, right here, right now, on how much in the way of emissions we produce as a nation. Thats ill advised, because we want to phase out carbon-emissions energy, while keeping the price of electricity, driving, and heating down. If you simply cap off carbon emissions, and keep rapidly lowering the cap, you bring energy sources that are not well enough built up yet straight to front and center. Its designed to fail, much like NCLB was for education. Maybe at the beginning wed meet our cap goals, but much like it was completely unrealistic to rapidly have more and more kids meeting AYP each year, and eventually 100% in the matter of around a decade or so, its completely unrealistic to quickly and drastically phase out fossil fuels. Youll start having to use more and more of the expensive energy sources each year, and theres no mechanism built into the concept to help those energy sources become cheaper through investments in research and innovation. Telling the energy industry to figure out how to keep energy cheap while very quickly requiring low amounts of fossil fuels is just as dumb as telling schools theyd have to keep the quality of education high and quickly get virtually all their kids meeting unrealistic standards, all with no built in mechanisms to better fund investments in atrisk kids. The trade part of the law is also incredibly flawed. If you are basically selling permits to burn more fossil fuels, first companies that want to burn more, go to companies that werent

going to burn much in the first place, and pay them for the right to burn more. So, in that sense, its a huge government-aided corporate redistribution of wealth. The energy and industrial sectors of our economy have to pay the low-carbon industries money to do what they used to do without having to pay those other corporations. From there, it could easily turn into a situation where companies looking to burn more fossil fuels pay fees to the government for the right to burn more. In the end, if enough companies do this you end up with more carbon emissions than you had before cap and trade legislation, and obviously much, much more than was the goal of the cap. So, if cap and trade doesnt work, and regulating fossil fuels to death also fails, then what role does government play in aiding the transition from a fossil fuel world to a low-carbon world? The answer lies in the word neutrality. We need a revenue neutral carbon tax, a neutral subsidy shift, and a neutral research shift. First we need the revenue neutral carbon tax. By revenue neutral, we mean no new taxes. Instead, this would be the sort of redistribution a rank and file conservative citizen would like. In exchange for taxing carbon intensive energy sources (i.e. coal, oil, and gas), wed seek to lower the federal income and/or payroll tax. In the end the government is still taking in the same amount of money, but instead of more of that externalities based cost climate change is costing you in the form of government spending on agriculture, storm recovery, wildfire recovery, rising seas, etc, etc, the energy industry pays for more of its own mess instead of you. Now, you might be thinking that taxing the fossil fuel industry is going to lead to the price being passed on to you, the consumer, and youd be right. However, you need to remember, you know have more money in your pocket because you are being taxed less. So, isnt this, then, just something that makes fossil fuel energy more expensive, while simultaneously helping you afford the more expensive energy? How does that help discourage the consumption of fossil fuel energy and encourage the consumption of clean energy? Well, by itself it doesnt do that, but thats where the next two components come in. Next, we have our neutral subsidy shift. You see, the government subsidizes and gives tax credits for energy. Fossil fuel companies and clean energy companies (as well as the consumers of both) benefit from this. In order to get energy sources like nuclear, biomass, hydropower, wind, solar, and geothermal cheaper we can more heavily subsidize them. Obviously, if those energy sources were more heavily subsidized the day theyd become as cheap and cheaper than fossil fuels are today would arrive quicker, but subsidization costs money, and taxpayers dont want to have to pick up the tab for that. So, lets not make them. Since we all desire the following 5 things: keeping energy cheap now, lowering the cost of externalities now, preventing the rising costs of finite energy sources with time, avoiding the fast approaching peak fossil fuels crisis, and avoiding the climate change crisis over the next century, lets just redistribute all the subsidy money towards clean energy. The taxpayers pay the same amount as ever, and the prices of previously more expensive energies go down, while the price of fossil fuels goes up. In the end, theres still cheap energy, just a different source is the cheap one. Finally, we have our neutral research shift. Once again, government money helps fund the

research that drives energy innovation. If we simply keep all the research funding levels the same but redistribute the funding completely away from fossil fuels and completely towards clean energy, the result will be clean energy advancement will accelerate and the cost will start to decline more rapidly. In the long run, this will eventually mean the level of subsidization can decrease, which could lead to even lower taxes for you, beyond the lower taxes you received from the redistribution of taxes from your federal income and payroll tax to the fossil fuel industry. It will be hard for a lot of conservative Americans to support a plan like this, but not because it doesnt hold their best conservative, self-interest at heart. Rather, they will dislike it because it contains all kinds of dirty words like taxes, subsidizes, clean energy and redistribution. Words should only be considered dirty or bad if they are going to hurt you or others. In this context these words dont hurt you, they help you. -First your income and/or payroll TAXES GO DOWN, while we tax the fossil fuel industry instead. -The SAME AMOUNT of your tax dollars go to energy subsidization, except now we will be giving all of it to clean energy instead of giving a bunch of it to the fossil fuel industry -The SAME AMOUNT of your tax dollars go to energy research and development, except now we will be giving all of it to clean energy instead of giving a bunch of it to the fossil fuel industry and other less important non-energy research causes. -In the short term youll have the EXTRA MONEY to pay the higher energy costs when we tax the fossil fuel industry -In the long run, youll SAVE MONEY, as the price of clean energy comes down to where the cost of fossil fuel energy currently is, while youre paying FEWER TAXES than you are today, as the subsidizes and research dollars start to pay off. -In the long, long run, youll SAVE EVEN MORE MONEY, as the price of clean energy falls below where fossil fuels are today, all while still paying FEWER TAXES than you do today. -In the long, long, long run, youll SAVE TONS OF MONEY, as the price of clean energy falls far below where fossil fuels are today, all while still paying FEWER TAXES, all while seeing the cost of EXTERNALITIES DECREASE, all while producing a future, where society AVOIDS A PEAK FOSSIL FUEL CRISIS and where it AVOIDS THE CLIMATE CHANGE CRISIS. So, which future do you want? One where you pay less in taxes, our energy sources switch from

finite/dirty to sustainable/clean, where the external costs of energy decrease, and where we avoid the inevitable peak fossil fuel and climate crises we are currently marching towards? To achieve that one, you simply have to take a tax cut, watch the fossil fuel industry get taxed, and watch government to aid the privately owned clean energy industry to its future place as our cheap, sustainable, domestic, reliable, climate friendly, energy source. Or do you want a future where you keep paying higher and higher hidden, indirect costs for fossil fuel energy, higher and higher costs for the smaller supplies of fossil fuel energy itself, then watch society first go through a series of global energy crises after peak fossil fuels, and finally die knowing your grandkids and great grandkids will have to deal with the aftermath of the climate fallout? To experience that future you can just keep doing business as usual. This includes you paying more taxes. It would all be for the sake of an ideologically based love of fossil fuels, their continued profit dominance, and adoption of conspiracy theories about energy and climate change that derive from a senseless fear of government and environmentalists. So, again, I ask you, which future do you want? Randall Olsen supports the future both know you crave.