Does energy from fossil fuels really cost less than renewable energy? It’s an important question, as it should be shaping our lives. But given the way we do our accounting we will never know, and won’t be able to make rational policy decisions. The renewable energy industry is forever trying to reduce its cost of […]
The National Association of Realtors has a tag line which reads “Under All is the Land”, which they use to exemplify how real estate is fundamental to society. As a former Realtor who is also passionate about energy, I’ve always wanted to correct them. Their phrase is catchy, but it’s wrong. The growth of society […]
Mankind, especially as exemplified in western culture, has developed into a ‘throw away’ society with a like-minded economy. For the past century now, products have been made inexpensive by using processes and materials which minimize labor input at the expense of energy input, such as automated molding and machining. (It used to be that the […]
I have argued before that the price of products should include the cost of returning the materials used to create the product to their natural state in order for market pricing pressures to evolve more environmentally friendly products. But there is another way that our ‘free market’ capitalism fails us when it comes to long […]
Or, ‘Why we do not have to fear high energy prices in the future.’ Many people, including policy makers, worry about the cost of electricity rising so high in the future that it causes a have/have not society, economic Armageddon, or at least, place a drag on economic production. This is especially true in the […]
