Do you know how much electricity that would take? Do you know what it costs to build the equipment for accomplishing that — all in just ten years?
The only thing we can’t do is start any sooner than now. Do you know that it now costs less to build and deploy renewable energy generation than it does to “MAINTAIN” fossil fuel plants? Saving the planet will require dumping much of the entrenched status quo that is now corrupting our government. No problem was ever solved using the same logic that created it.
Our energy needs can be supplied more efficiently if we attack them from both the supply and demand side, but that won’t get done with a President in office personally getting involved in petty issues like the incandescent bulb that is a technology almost a century and a half old. Let’s bring back the buggy whip while we are at it.
the owners of these vehicles would have to buy electric cars costing about $25,000 apiece. Where is the average American going to come up with a spare $25,000?
This would have to be phased in according to the age of existing vehicles, probably over a ten-year span, to have the best impact. If one thinks about the cost savings to consumers of going electric, not counting initial investment, the vehicles would almost pay for themselves. The government would have to underwrite zero-interest financing for the purchases, or simply pay for them, which shouldn’t be any more difficult than bailing out the banks in ‘08-’11 to the tune of $29 Trillion according to many estimates. When banks and billionaires need bailing out no expense is too extreme, but saving life on earth, not so much.
The world didn’t blow up or go into hyperinflation then. In fact, the Fed has missed its own inflation target almost every year since then. The “real” limit to financing such a proposal isn’t even money, but potential production capacity to supply the vehicles. As long as money isn’t chasing scarce goods spending isn’t inflationary, and inflation, not a meaningless budget, is the only constraint on the monopoly issuer of the currency. This alone could solve poverty and supply jobs for many American workers for a decade.
Of course, the solar power stations don’t produce any power at night, so we’ll need humongous amounts of battery storage to get us through the night. We’ll also have to build huge HVDC lines all over the country to wheel power around. We’re talking many trillions of dollars to build that much infrastructure. Where do you think that money will come from?
The key to supplying our future power is decentralization. Solar panels can be installed on the roofs of homes and the batteries required would be much smaller and easier to replace as they age. Large parking areas could be given canopies with solar panels and plug-ins while also supplying the business. It is now possible to build solar generation into paving. These, of course, are not American innovations, as America has been focussed on protecting the status quo fossil fuel industry since ‘80.
Again, the money is not a “thing” that we must find. It is no more difficult to produce than the points awarded to sports teams. One never worries about a stadium running out of points at a football game, and the US dollar is no different as long as the real resources are available that the money is deployed to purchase.
That’s 40% of the current Federal budget each year. In order to divert that much money to his Green plan, he’ll need to take away from the American people resources that are proportionally similar to the losses that Americans suffered during the worst years of the Depression — every year for ten years.
The federal government cannot “divert” money. It can only create and destroy it. It does so by electronically marking accounts up and down at the Fed, not printing. There is no need to “take away” financial resources, and it would be a disaster to attempt to pay for such large investments with taxation. The government’s red ink is the only source of (net after bank debt) black ink the private sector has. A “balanced” budget is a 100% tax rate that leaves nothing in the economy to store value from commerce, net retire private debt, or fund economic or population growth.
The current and ongoing decline of American society is a direct result of starving the American economy of currency, forcing it to rely on credit to maintain lifestyles. This only works as long as growth is sufficient to roll over private bank debt, but makes the economy extremely fragile and susceptible to the ups and downs of the business cycles. Clinton’s budget surpluses, widely touted by Democrats of proof they are the “fiscally responsible” party, gave us not only the 2000 recession, but also, by many economist’s estimation kicked off the massive increase in private debt that led to people using their homes as ATM cards and eventually fueling the great recession.
