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I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m a strong advocate for the environment. I like to breath clean air. I like to dive on healthy pristine ocean reefs. I like my snow to taste good when I totally bite it while tearing down the ski slopes.
I am increasingly seeing signs of a global man-made energy crisis.
When people ask me if I believe in man-made global warming I say “absolutely”. I also believe in cow-made global warming. Yes, COWS. Actually cows emit more harmful gases into the air than us humans. But of course we grow cows to feed people so I suppose you could still blame us humans.
I believe that humans are impacting the environment — both positively and negatively. I believe that some people are spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt for political and financial gain. I mean, look who is making millions off of carbon trading or off of government grants. People are going to say almost anything when their livelihood is at stake. Yes. I’m saying that people are probably lying — on both sides of the political isle.
My chief concern is that politicians and carbon traders are going to pick winners and losers amongst all the available energy options. And generally their choices will hurt critical sectors of the American economy. Sure it would be cool to setup a bunch of wind turbine manufacturing plants in the US. But those plants will do nothing to offset the loss in manufacturing to countries with cheaper energy generation. China has to be licking their chops as they add new power plants every month.
Will datacenters that consume 3%+ of all power in the US be viable in a future driven by high energy costs and carbon taxes? Suddenly those off-shore datacenters are starting to look pretty good.
I wrote an article in my company’s blog 6 months ago questioning “green” policy efforts. I’ve been doing some more thinking about this subject lately as I’ve come across articles about taxing energy producers to offset global warming.
Let’s think about this logically.
Energy is required to innovate. Physicists need to run simulations on grid supercomputers. Large disk systems are required to store testing data. Email and collaboration tools are required to coordinate project teams. All of these activities require power.
As you increase the cost of power you increase the cost to innovate. Increasing the cost of innovation will likely slow innovation and decrease the number of companies pursuing innovation.
I believe we should focus on decreasing the cost of energy versus building an artificial energy market using tax credits or carbon caps. What we have today is a situation where government is manipulating the energy market to force changes in energy production and costs.
I agree that we should minimize our impact to the planet by reducing waste. I want to leave my children a cleaner world than my grandparents left me (which actually won’t be hard to do). But making it harder to innovate and solve energy production problems at a time we need it most is kind of like cutting off our nose to spite our face. I would rather increase pollution over the next 10 years and keep energy costs low if that meant we could find a longterm energy solution faster.
Many proponents of artificially inflating the cost of energy believe that this will spur change in the market. I agree that this will create change: even more companies moving manufacturing and operations to countries like China and India that are building power plants like mad. But even if you believe that artificially increasing energy costs will drive companies to look for new forms of energy you have to make a big bet: new and cheaper forms of energy will be found.
Maybe instead of creating a carbon trading system people should be buying stock in companies that are researching new forms of energy production. At least they would be putting their money where their mouth is. They could be part of the solution versus becoming a barrier.
