Billions of people living in developing countries do not benefit from government subsidies.
Guest post co-author Ronald, Oliver Hermes, and Steve Curtis
When the government goes about its business, citizens begin to suffer. Citizens prosper when government supports laws that promote an economic playing field for all in a free enterprise system. The United States is a good example. Under a free enterprise system, this small alliance of a little over 13 different colonies grew into the world's greatest industrial power in just over 100 years.
Under the current system, where government spending picks winners and losers in business and employs huge numbers of people, we have accumulated an unsustainable debt of over $100,000 per person. This is on top of the personal debt burden of our citizens today. Yet we still have advocates who want to turn personal debt into national debt and further burden our children and grandchildren. This can't possibly end well.
The poorest Americans are richer than most. Of the 8 billion people currently on the planet, more than 5 billion live on less than $10 a day, almost half of the world’s people (more than 3 billion people) live on less than $2.50 a day, and billions of people have virtually no access electricity. This is the benefit of dictatorships and oligarchies masquerading as democratic republics to control these vulnerable groups.
The most important commodities we have today are products and fuels made from fossil fuels that did not exist 200 years ago. Petroleum provides raw materials for more than 6,000 products produced by different industries and meets the needs of 8 billion people on the planet. Without oil, all our products would cost more.
The fossil fuel industry also provides transportation fuels. Today, we have more than 50,000 merchant ships, more than 20,000 commercial aircraft, and more than 50,000 military aircraft using fuel made from crude oil. The jets used to transport people and products, the merchant ships used to move global trade, and the fuel needed for the heavy-lift and long-range needs of military and space programs also rely on the production of crude oil. These fuels also support the world's 1.4 billion cars and 14 million trucks registered worldwide.
The second most important commodity we have today is electricity. It is the perfect commodity for control at the state level to reinforce the oppression of its citizens. Subsidies for continuous, uninterrupted and dispatchable electricity from coal, natural gas and nuclear power are only for electricity, which cannot exist without products and components made from petroleum derivatives made from fossil fuels. Subsidies help control electricity production, keeping it scarce and expensive.
Most electricity is produced using coal and natural gas. Natural gas is replacing coal, but beyond that, not much has changed in the structure, despite massive subsidies being offered to those willing to switch from inefficient and expensive electricity production to cheap and plentiful energy. This is reflected in the fact that electricity generation from coal and natural gas is 95% or more of what it was a decade ago. Renewable energy subsidies have caused the retail cost of electricity to double or triple in some countries compared with a decade ago, even as air quality has suffered over the same time period.
Yet many people advocate eliminating coal, gas and oil from the world, no matter how much they cost people. Perhaps we should reconsider this radical and expensive shift. Remember, you, the citizens, pay for all government spending, including the cost of electricity production infrastructure, whether in taxes or direct utility bills.
We all know that special interest groups financially support government policymakers, and therefore government policies financially support special interest groups in the form of subsidies. The media portrays these subsidies as “free money,” while we seem to ignore that the money actually comes from poor people and their children. If the rich paid taxes they wouldn't stay rich, so it must come from somewhere.
Since subsidies come from all of us, maybe we should be careful about how we spend them. It turns out that much of the subsidy goes to foreign companies, many of which support the use of slave labor to mine “green” minerals and metals to produce windmills, solar panels and electric car batteries, with environmental consequences. Landscaping to enhance the mandatory use of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels in “our backyard”!
We also pay foreign companies to install them. This reality reveals the imperialist nature of American politics, which exploits the world’s poor to fuel our desire for luxury goods. This is obviously unethical.
Without U.S. government subsidies, the “renewable energy” industry would disappear.
Ironically, allowing businesses to compete freely to supply electricity would significantly lower costs for consumers, as it would with all products. In fact, after all subsidies are removed, nuclear power is the cheapest and least spectacular way to generate electricity. This was demonstrated throughout the world in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, China leads the world in the production of new nuclear power plants. Do they see something that the rest of the world doesn’t?
How does the state demonstrate individual power and control over its citizens through the subsidy process, taking money from the people to produce inferior products and increase their daily expenses?
Since the United States was a leader in all technological advancements during the Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-to-late 1800s, it makes sense that we would lead the rest of the world in harnessing nuclear power to produce cheap, clean energy. One way is to petition state governors to show the federal government how to do this. Competition for the production and delivery of electricity, like our citizens' demand for long distance telephone service. After all, if production stays the same and demand soars, a data center bid for electricity at a dollar per kilowatt hour might be more competitive than one at a cent per kilowatt hour. How much better off would you be?
The transition to nuclear energy will happen quickly when its possibilities are understood. Until the market drives the transition to nuclear power, the transition should occur without eliminating cheap electricity generation from natural gas and coal. Imagine how much better the quality of life would be around the world by providing affordable electricity to every home.
If the United States does not take the lead in adopting “a new nuclear posture for a hungry world” (which Oliver Stone's 105-minute film Nuclear Now fully supports), our adversaries will.
Ronald Stein PE
Ambassador for Energy and Infrastructure, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book “Clean Energy Development,” energy knowledge policy advisor to Heartland Institute and Council for a Constructive Tomorrow, national television commentator – Energy and Infrastructure with Rick Amato Rick Amato).
Ronald Stein, PE is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy, environmental policy, and human rights, and founder of PTS Advance, a California-based company.
Ron contends that energy literacy starts with recognizing that renewable energy is just intermittent electricity generated by unreliable breezes and sunlight, because wind turbines and solar panels cannot produce anything for the 8 billion people on Earth.
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