I suppose this particular post is mostly just a placeholder. Not sure I have all that much to say right now on the topic of energy.
Not that it's on the horizon or worth discussing in a political context, but I continue to hold out hope for fusion as source of practical plentiful non-polluting domestic energy. Until the scientists do their thing, that's already more than needs to be said about that.
I buy into the idea that energy is partly a national security issue. And a very important economic issue. And obviously an environmental issue. Which means it's going to be very complicated and hard to strike the appropriate balance. Sigh.
I also acknowledge that government has not been impartial about energy sources and energy uses. There are often subsidies some of which fall into the very slippery category of externalities. It might be suggested that an improvement would be to get the government entirely out of picking winners (i.e., subsidies). If externalities were accounted for, well, that might work out environmentally and ultimately economically. But I'm not so sure about security-wise. And I'm also not so sure that the transition (current subsidies eliminated producing a period of free & fair competitiveness leading ultimately to one/few "winners" working up their economies of scale) would be sufficiently pain-free and timely to the point where the nation might be better off simply picking/mandating new and more appropriate to the current world situation "winners" and swapping existing subsidies for new ones (which once unneeded would be removed). But how on earth could that be a process unaffected by politics and favoritism?
Yup. Just a placeholder for the energy topic. Unless that fusion thing comes through.
