We are all Indians to the fossil fuel cowboys, but this time the
The U.S. Senate
yesterday rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.
It won’t end there, but it should, because solar power is cheaper, faster, cleaner,
and actually does bring jobs to the U.S.
Solar power is already second only to methane in new energy generation,
and solar is increasing its growth rate much faster than “natural” gas.
Solar is going to win, and quickly.
How many unnecessary, destructive, and hazardous pipelines will we let
the fracking industry gouge through here before we get on with solar power
for local energy, local jobs, and local lower electric bills?
According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries
Solar Market Insight Year in Review 2013, photovoltaic
installations continued to proliferate, increasing 41 percent over
2012 to reach 4,751 megawatts. In addition, 410 megawatts of
concentrating solar power came on-line.
Solar was the second-largest source of new electricity generating
capacity in the U.S., exceeded only by natural gas. Additionally,
the cost to install solar fell throughout the year, ending the year
15 percent below the mark set at the end of 2012.
Jennifer DeCesaro of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)
said she liked showing a map of U.S. insolation
outside the U.S. southwest because
then she could point out that
Spain has not as good resources and a larger solar market,
while Germany, the world leader in deployed solar,
has solar resources like the state of Alaska.
So the U.S. has plenty of solar energy everywhere.
She made a few other comparisons between U.S. and Germany.
U.S.: 30% investment tax credit.
Germany: National Feed-in Tariff.
The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.
These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.
A review of the extensive research on incarceration and crime suggests that these savings could be achieved without any appreciable deterioration in public safety.
There’s a 19 page PDF report published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research,
but that one graph pretty much spells it out:
incarceration went up abruptly starting in the early 1980s and continued up,
while crime did not.
What we have here is a very expensive policy mistake.
For the past 90 years this debate has been dominated by the professional purveyors of moral panic in our society – a toxic combination of politicians, pressmen, prelates and policemen, aided and abetted by ill-informed parents, who have sought to pre-empt any serious discussion of “psychoactive” substances.