Reversal of Energy Policy Direction Underway???

[GRG55]

Re: Reversal of Energy Policy Direction Underway???

...Human nature being what it is, "saving the planet" from the evils of carbon emissions and "Big Oil" sounds fine. Until it actually starts to hit home in people's wallets. The trade-off between an immediate, measurable and personal cost versus a deferred, ambiguous, and shared benefit always seemed a tough political sell to me. In hard economic times, might it become nearly impossible?

The belated recognition of faltering economies, contracting business activity, rising unemployment, and the spreading disease of falling home prices (the last being an unfamiliar but deadly situation for elected officials :p) seems to be taking the edge off talk of society-reforming, climate-change motivated taxation and spending policies...



...So the questions that arise include:

• As the economy spirals down, with all the usual consequences on employment and so forth, will climate change and carbon taxes fall off the OECD political agenda?
• Could the recent demand destruction, falling prices and rising crude oil inventories defer immediate concerns about energy security [perhaps for a few years]?
• Could a "deflation scare" prompt OECD politicians to reverse anti-carbon motivated policies discouraging hydrocarbons, and undertake policies [such as fuel tax cuts and home heating subsidies] that actually increase consumption in an expedient effort to boost their recession-mired economies, and buy votes?
• If this all comes to pass, does it mean a material extension to the timeline before the advent of "The Next Bubble"?
• Or does it significantly increase the probability of that other, less desirable, outcome...No Next Bubble...?

Well that didn't take long. Fiscal Stimulus II [for 2008]; how creative of them...:p

Senate Democrats Propose $56 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

By Brian Faler
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Democrats proposed a $56 billion economic stimulus package that would increase government spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps, infrastructure projects, aid to state governments and heating aid to the poor...

...The plan would also spend...$5.1 billion for heating assistance to the poor...

Mere crumbs for the proletariat compared to the cheques about to be issued from Treasury to Wall Street.

[phirang]

Re: Reversal of Energy Policy Direction Underway???

Well that didn't take long. Fiscal Stimulus II [for 2008]; how creative of them...:p

Senate Democrats Propose $56 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

By Brian Faler
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Democrats proposed a $56 billion economic stimulus package that would increase government spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps, infrastructure projects, aid to state governments and heating aid to the poor...

...The plan would also spend...$5.1 billion for heating assistance to the poor...

Mere crumbs for the proletariat compared to the cheques about to be issued from Treasury to Wall Street.

Hey, cronies in Wall St. are risking OPM to make paper returns on funny-money: and we have the nerve to impugn the Russian capital markets!