These thoughts from The Zephyr’s Colorado Plateau Bureau Chief, Doug Meyer…
When it came to “saving the planet,” I always expected the message to come via a Presidential address to the nation—you know, something like: “My fellow Americans, now is the time for each household to ask what sacrifices we might be willing to endure for the good of our country, and indeed Planet Earth,” or words to that effect. But it didn’t happen; when The O should have been warning us that consumption on this gargantuan scale could not continue forever, when did he ever say we needed to reduce the juice? Instead, during the campaign, he implied the hard work would be done for us, through the magic of efficiency.
Now we see what that really means. Waxman-Markey (the cap-and-trade bill) contains language designed to achieve “peak demand reduction”. Automatically. No questions asked. In case you think this was the Democrats’ idea, check out this excerpt from a New York Times article a year ago that described the ideas of Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy:
“Under Save-a-Watt, Duke would, for example, distribute ‘smart’ meters that automatically turn off customers’ appliances during periods of peak power use. For its first experiment, Duke plans to cut the consumption of its customers in the Carolinas by 1,800 megawatts, which is equal to the output of two new coal-fired plants. The regulator would then let Duke charge higher rates for the electricity its customers do use to pay for all the efficiency technology. Save-a-Watt thus turns the power business on its head: rather than charge customers more to build plants, Duke will effectively charge them not to do so.”
Isn’t that neat? Now, last I checked, most of the red states don’t even believe in global warming. So I’ve got some questions I hope the Zephyr readers can enlighten me on: How many folks do you think are going to be aware of this as the bill heads to the Senate in the fall? Will we all be “encouraged” to buy new appliances that work with the “smart” meters? Will Plasma TV’s be included? (If yes, I’m starting to like this.) IF the Republicans really wanted to stop this bill, why didn’t they play this up? Will this be an effective response to global warming? And is this a good way for democracy to undertake cultural change?
What do YOU think?
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