Rep. Ed Markey took the time to sit down with us this morning after the delegate breakfast. Rep. Markey likes to get his facts straight: He had two or three advisors and staffers sitting in to confirm facts and details of the legislation we discussed.
I'll have more later, but briefly, we touched on the following things:
- Rep. Markey does indeed believe that use of corn for ethanol is affecting food prices. He points to a changing subsidy structure — away from corn, and in favor of cellulosic ethanol — as evidence of Congress' concern. He says Congress will continue to revisit those subsidies in coming years.
- Regarding Al Gore's goal of 100% renewable electricity in 10 years: He sounds doubtful that could happen, but points to developments already happening in solar and wind: 35% of new electricity this year is from wind.
- Subsidies for clean energy are due to expire at the end of this year; these are critical for energy companies to secure funding. Markey says that Speaker Pelosi plans to reintroduce legislation for these subsidies in September.
- Net neutrality: Markey remains committed to equal access to bandwidth, pointing to the entrepreneurial principles that were in the 1996 telecom law, which opened up the onramps to bandwidth and in his colorful phrase, created a “paranoia-based, Darwinian marketplace.”
I'll have quotes and greater clarity and detail later.
Please share widely!
Corn has gone from three cents a pound to six cents a pound. Sure that’s a big increase in terms of percentages — but it’s still only three cents a pound.
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p>For meat, that means costs go up about 30 cents a pound — it takes 10 pounds of corn to make one pound of beef. But for corn chips and breakfast cereal and nibblets [by weight about the only corn we eat directly as a nation], the price has gone up by under four cents a pound, accounting for the weight of the uneatable cob.
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p>If your box of corn flakes have gone up by more than four cents, I humbly submit to you that the cost of fuel needed to ship that corn to processing, to run the processing plant, to ship it to a warehouse, and then to ship it to the store, as well as to keep the heat, cool, and lights on in the store — is the cause for the increased price in food. I suspect the increase in minimum wage may have also had an impact, though I don’t know the extent.
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p>If food’s more expensive, it ain’t the 3-4 cents per pound for the price of corn.
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p>Anybody got any analysis that shows otherwise?
If it can’t happen in ten years, it’s only for political reasons — not technological ones, and not financial ones, unless you count campaign contributions from oil companies.
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p>We have enormous wind and solar resources, as well as significant geothermal and biomass potential, and none of it needs new technology to take advantage of. Some estimates I’ve seen suggest we can take advantage of them to provide all our electricity for an investment of one or two hundred billion over the next ten years — or less than half what the interstate highway system cost, adjusted to current dollars. (Comparison to the ongoing, shockingly enormous cost of the “war on terror” are left as an exercise for the reader.)
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p>We can build it. I do, however, sadly, share my Rep’s skepticism that we will.
with EXISTing ways to gain efficiencies in our uses of energy and bang! Easy as pie.
According to the Census Bureau, median household income in 2001 was around $42k, and with some googling I find a number of households around 111 million (though that may be out of date). Let’s say we need two hundred billion over ten years, and round to 50 million households above median income. I know I’m willing to pay an extra four thousand bucks in taxes over the next decade.
If you’re going to get 35 years of service from the infrastructure, putting it on a 30 year bond is wholly responsible.
But even if I don’t have to, I’d be willing to, and I (and most of the other households above the median income line) can afford to. So we can certainly afford to stretch out the funding over a longer term.
But is it OK?
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p>Did you happen to bring it up?
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p>Comrade?
who had to rely on the government of Venezuela to help keep their homes warm last winter because the American government was too busy spending money in Iraq.