Posts Tagged ‘Excessive Regulation’

With General Motors filing for bankruptcy today and our esteem federal government taking operational control (has our government ever been successful at turning a real profit?), I thought it timely that the Wall Street Journal would find  someone that has experience in a government’s running of a car company.  In this article,  Lt. Gen Pacepa, once a Soviet bloc car czar, describes his experiences and lack of successes.  Enjoy!

Oh, and remember that under the new union agreement (you know, the one that gives the UAW about 17% of the new GM while the more secure bond holders get much less), GM is not allowed to import from their global factories the more fuel efficient small cars made for non-US markets.  Bravo to the union for struggling along with us and our environment.

You may think that, from the title above, I am recommending that we can solve the problem of greenhouse gas creation by having our congressmen shut their mouths.  That may be a good idea, but that’s not where I was going with it. 

According to the EPA’s most recent study,   70% of the CO2 gas emissions in the US come from generating electricity (utilities) and transportation (cars and trucks) with the utilities being the majority.  Fine, that makes sense since the burning of fossil fuels generates CO2 gas.  Since we knew all along that burning fossil fuels were potentially harmful, why did the government make it easier to commission new gas-fired power plants and nearly impossible to commission new nuclear plants?

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, between 1992 and 2007, the US commissioned 123x more gas-fired energy capacity as it did nuclear capacity.  Never mind the fact that nuclear energy is also 10% less expensive compared to coal-fired and over 20% less expensive than gas-fired.  Why did this occur?  Regulatory hurdles is the short answer.  The long answer will have to wait until someone else with much more knowledge writes about it or I have more time. 

What really gets my goat (yes, goats also generate greenhouse gases) is that the congress’ proposed solution to the gas emission problem is called the Waxman-Markey bill.  This bill would place a whole new level of government burden on all industry and, according to their own estimates, raise each household’s energy bill by $1,600 per year.  If that wasn’t bad enough, our elected officials want to provide ‘free credits’ to some industries in order to get this legislation through.  These credits allow those that hold them to go on producing the pollution that the bill attempts to lessen.  Who would get these free credits?  Funny you should ask.  Those that create most of the problem in the first place, the electric utilities. 

So, to make this long, painful story shorter, our federal government has potentially created a climate problem (still up for discussion, of course) by favoring one form of electricity generation over a more efficient, cleaner form.  And to correct the problem, they propose to impose heavy regulation over all except for the one industry that represents the largest source.

At least we can say that our government is consistent…