Is Our Love Affair With Coal Really Worth It?
Because we depend on fossil fuels so much, many put the need for more fossil fuels way ahead of alternatives. Ford, other car companies, and the oil companies killed the electric car and have suppressed other efforts to get us off of fossil fuels.
It’s all about bottom lines. When oil companies can monopolize alternative fuels, we will get alternative fuels. What the US government and the oil companies conspire to do is to make sure no one comes out with an alternative that might effectively put the oil companies out of business. They do not want any shift of power to happen.
In a free market society, if you build a better mousetrap that makes the other guy’s product obsolete, then you win the market share. That’s a true free market. The US has no free market. The Fed determines interest rates, which determines stock prices and both affect the value of the US Dollar. That is not a free market by very definition.
Proppping up failing companies is also anti-free market. If you go bankrupt, no matter who you are, you should be allowed to go bankrupt, regardless of how that affects investors or owners of those businesses.
Ahhh, but here’s the rub. Those failing companies contribute a lot of money to the campaigns of politicians that can vote to bail them out when they get into trouble. A free market means you are also free to fail, opening the door for another entrepreneur to grab their market share. That is free enterprise.
The only people that get hurt by the current situation is the small business person who has a better idea and a better product for consumers. They start beating the big guy, the government runs in and bails the big guy out so he can stay ahead of you. Maybe there should be a law that says that if the government spends money to bail a company out, they must also give the same amount of money to all their competitors. That might limit the number of times we do this.
Back to the coal thing. Because of our dependence on coal, mine owners are willing to do whatever it takes to get more coal and make more profit, including drilling so close to fault lines that there is bound to be a collapse. Every day without a collapse is pure luck. Then when there is a collapse, the owners tell us all how well they are following regulations and how much they are doing to rescue the miners.
Here’s a good example of such a mine and mine owner from the NYTimes
Panel to Consider Stronger Regulation of Utah Mines
By DAN FROSCH
Published: September 25, 2007The commission, created by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. after last month’s collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine, is expected to hear testimony from mine operators and those who live in the tight-knit surrounding towns, many of them coal miners whose relatives have toiled underground for generations.
So in other words, the panel will hear from mine owners and those that work for them and depend on the mines to make a living. It’s like convening a panel to look into how the Iraq War is doing and appointing the guy in charge of the Iraq war to be in charge of the investigation into the Iraq War. Wait . . . they did do that.
At first glance it looks like they are giving miners a say in how things will be regulated. But their bosses will be there. Their living depends on keeping their job. They are not going up against the mine owners and will say basically what they have been told to say and the government will once again have an excuse for not doing anything.
Do you think children should be allowed to vote on what laws we pass to protect children? The regulating organizations need to do the regulating and stop asking the mine owners for their opinions. If the mine operators cannot produce enough coal, then we will be forced to find alternatives. WIN WIN.
Mr. Huntsman expressed frustration at the federal mine agency’s handling of the disaster and the process by which the Murray Energy Corporation, the mine’s co-owner, received approval to conduct retreat mining at Crandall Canyon. The procedure involves shearing thick pillars of coal and is often considered risky.
A report issued in February by the House Committee on Education and Labor concluded that the agency was too slow to address risks laid out by the Miner Act and to approve two-way, wireless communication systems that would allow miners and rescue workers to stay in touch when something went wrong underground.
According to the Miner Act, the federal agency must create regulations for the installation of the systems by 2009, but agency officials say they have not found a communications device durable enough to function in the extreme environment of a coal mine.
We can get private companies to build a spaceship capable of leaving the earth’s atmosphere without blowing up, but we can’t get anyone to build a better walkie talkie?
It’s excuses like this that let’s you know that politicians are not going to do anything that might hurt the mine operators that contribute to their campaigns.
Stumble it!