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How much pollution are you willingly to subsidize? Or do you think pollution doesn't have economic impacts? China is losing a few hundred billion USD per year because of their use of cheap coal and lax environmental regulations.
Air quality is one of the key factors prompting wealthy Chinesd to relocate to the US and Canada.
I think it has a lot to do with economies of scale. If every home had solar panels, or even if all new construction in certain regions of the country were required to install solar panels, at some point that industry would be flourishing.
This would drive up the cost of power considerably. A great deal of what you pay fro electricity is becsue of the plant which is expected to be running as much as possible. You cannot eliminate those plants if you are supplementing with solar no matter what the percentage is.
Quote:
Oil and gas subsidies exceed the tax subsidies to renewable energy sources by a wide margin.
"A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute[29] assessed the size and structure of U.S. energy subsidies in 2002–08. The study estimated that subsidies to fossil fuel-based sources totaled about $72 billion over this period and subsidies to renewable fuel sources totaled $29 billion."
False again, this study includes such things as the black lung benefit. This is a tax or fee (whatever you want to call it) collected from coal mines to fund this benefit. The beneficiaries of this program do not pay tax on it. There is no tax on tax in other words and they are labeling this as subsidy.
If you are going to look at subsidies you cannot look at totals, you need to look at the subsidy per unit of production. There may be a newer version of this but this is the latest on I'm aware of from 2013:
A major part of how the oil and gas industry is subsidized is that they are not paying for the damage they are doing to the environment. That's a subsidy that you can't even put a dollar amount on, it is so immense.
For every ton of coal that is mined there is per ton fee applied fro reclamation. This has nothing to do with the site they are mining. These fees are used to reclaim abandoned property that may have existed for more than a century. It's not just coal mines but any type of mine, in this sense not only is the coal mining industry cleaning up it's own legacy it's also doing it for other industries like the metals mining industry for example.
Clean air regulations and switch to natural gas and other forms of energy are causing the closing of coal mines, coal is going to be around for awhile but certainly not close to the levels in the past. Much of the criticsm is new standards for th eclean air act and enforcing regulaions that have been on the books for decades.
Much of the criticsm is new standards for th eclean air act and enforcing regulaions that have been on the books for decades.
The recent mercury regulations that prematurely closed some coal plants will reduce deposition rates here in the US an estimated 1 to 10 percent resulting in the average IQ increasing an estimated 2/1000 of one point.
This is not practical or even sane, in fact if enough jobs are lost to overseas manufacturers becsue of increased energy costs the deposition rates could even increase.
You can't live in modern society without energy either, there is a limit to what is practical.
You can't live at all without clean air, water and food. You won't need to worry about any society if we poison ourselves. What good is electricity if you're dying of cancer or some other disease caused by pollution?
What good is electricity if you're dying of cancer or some other disease caused by pollution?
A modern society cannot survive without plentiful energy including feeding all those people. The problem with your argument is you seek to focus on the small issues while ignoring the overwhelming benefits including health benefits fossil fuels have provided us.
This country has gone through a great deal of expense to limit the amount of pollution but there is limits to what is practical if you expect to have a prosperous and healthy society. It doesn't matter how clean the air is if Grandma is freezing to death.
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