Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy

If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. https://t.co/pMziZUFgWe

— Ron Ross (@RonRoss88802732) July 20, 2021

While no other “carbon free” method of producing electricity comes even close to nuclear energy, climate change alarmists refuse to even consider the option.

If you do an objective benefit-cost analysis of nuclear energy compared to the so-called “green energies” of solar and wind you learn that green energies have serious time and space limitations. For example, you learn that with solar and wind there is a disconnect between when they’re produced and when they’re consumed. Nighttime and cloudy days happen, and the wind does not always blow, but the need for electricity goes on.

The only solution to those limitations is reliance on batteries. Batteries, of course, have their own problems. It takes at least an hour and usually eight hours to charge an electric vehicle’s batteries. It takes only five minutes to fill your gas tank.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Solar Power’s Land Grab Hits a Snag: Environmentalists.” Samantha Gross of the Brookings Institution writes, “An energy system based on renewables is still an industrial-scale system, with large generation and transmission projects that people don’t necessarily want in their neighborhoods.” Mojave solar farms essentially displace the animals that were living there. Indian tribes have also protested against the projects. Several of the largest projects in the planning stages are in jeopardy of cancellation. In contrast, for access, oil and natural gas require only a 12-inch hole in the ground.

There is also a locational disconnect between the producers and users of solar and wind energy. For oil and gas, the most efficient logistical solutions are pipelines.

Top Articles 10 Reasons to Question the Election Are Masks About to Become Permanent? Classroom Cameras Won't Stop Big Education. This Will. COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity Read More Isn't It about Time to Stop Lobbing Ridiculous Accusations at Trump? The Left's Contempt for the Masses COVID Authoritarianism Has ChangedOur Polity COVID Authoritarianism Has Changed Our Polity Democrats hate pipelines. On his first day in office, with no justification given, Joe Biden stopped cold the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline and, along with that, its thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re left with a half-completed pipeline along with rising gasoline and natural gas prices.

Wind and solar have become popular not because of any actual advantages but because leftists think and act like teenagers. They’re ruled by emotions. They fall madly in love for the flimsiest of reasons. For teenagers that lunacy doesn't last long. For environmentalists and their Democrat enablers, that emotional attachment can and often does last for decades. As Milton Friedman famously observed, “There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.”

Still another policy disaster Democrats have foisted on us is ethanol. It is the most land greedy of the “green energy’ alternatives. Ethanol is a witches’ brew of politics, taxpayer confiscation, mileage reduction, and small-engine destruction.

We’re creating giant land footprints in a futile attempt to reduce our “carbon footprints.” Land footprints are real problems in the here and now. Carbon footprints are unproven, hypothetical problems in the distant future.

We now devote fully one-fourth of our corn-growing farmland to the production of ethanol. If we returned that land to growing food and fodder we would significantly reduce prices and the benefits would be felt far and wide.

An important ingredient of economic efficiency is that “resources flow to their highest valued uses.” Employing farmland to produce energy rather than food is a gross violation of that principle. Using valuable farmland for energy production is asinine.

Coercion is also a necessary part of the ethanol fiasco. In California, it's illegal to use ethanol-free gasoline on public roads. You can buy ethanol-free gasoline for your lawnmower at only a few locations and at prices even higher than California’s already highest prices in the country.

Federal mandates require virtually all gasoline to include 10 percent ethanol. There is pressure to increase that to 15 percent. Even the 10 percent gasoline reduces mileage because ethanol produces only 70 percent of the energy produced by gasoline.

Ethanol takes more energy to produce than it produces. It’s done for political, not logical or economic reasons, and we are less prosperous because of it.

California is obsessed with so-called “zero-emissions” transportation, i.e., electric vehicles. The state passed numerous laws, regulations, and subsidies in pursuit of that objective. But EVs are not currently free of carbon emissions. Fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) generate most of the electricity needed to charge their batteries. If nuclear energy generated that same electricity we could honestly say that EVs generate “zero-emissions.”

Even Elon Musk admits that there is not enough electricity generating capacity to allow widespread conversion to EVs. The only way there could be enough capacity is by resorting to nuclear power.

The last remaining nuclear plant in California is at Diablo Canyon and has been operating since 1985. It is the single largest power station in the state, generating ten percent of California’s electricity. Because of the state’s hostility toward nuclear power, it is scheduled to close in 2025. No one knows what will replace that generating capacity. It certainly will not be wind and solar. Cutting electricity generation by a tenth when the state already has barely enough electricity is criminal recklessness.

Until the past few years, blackouts and brownouts were almost unheard of. What’s changed? The answer is easy to find.

According to Robert Bryce, progressive politicians and their enabling voters have created a disastrous combination of “soaring electricity prices and ever-worsening reliability.” What’s bizarre is that it has all been deliberate. The left is obsessed with weaning humanity off its reliance on fossil fuels. Californians are now the proud possessors of the highest income-tax rates, highest sales-tax rates, highest gasoline prices, and highest housing costs in the country.

California already has laws on the books that mandate reducing “greenhouse emissions” 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050. It is irresponsible to mandate an end to fossil fuel use when there is no viable substitute in place, at least not one they’re willing to entertain. If nuclear energy is off the table, blackouts will become a way of life. California will become a ghost state. Only leftists will be happy.

Michael Shellenberger, author of best-selling Apocalypse Never, recently tweeted that “the problems of nuclear power are not technological but political.” He added, “I’ve realized just how much of the problem comes down to energy density.” Nuclear energy is the energy densest of all the currently feasible alternatives.

If we altered our attitudes about nuclear energy, it would be a game-changer. We could reduce our carbon footprint to 1980 levels. We could stop killing birds with our windmills and solar energy sites. We could return all our fertile farmland to food production. And we could eliminate the labyrinth of costly subsidies and coercive regulations, most of which do far more harm than good. We could say goodbye to blackouts and electricity rationing and hello to energy abundance.

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◼ Now is the Time to Get Serious About Nuclear Energy July 17, 2021

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Today's California seems to hate the private sector. And vice versa.

◼ Don't Blame Reagan - North Coast Journal

We can all agree that California is a fiscal mess. As I have traveled around the country over the past few months, people I talk with seem to essentially view our state with a sense of pity. They ask, "What are you guys going to do out there?"

The fact that this state, with all its natural beauty, delightful climate and creative population, has gotten itself into such dire straits raises the obvious question -- why? How, exactly, did this come to pass?

Two Bay Guardian journalists, Steven Jones and Tim Redmond, present the rather implausible hypothesis that the true sources of our problems are rooted in the long-ago administration of Ronald Reagan and the free market philosophy that he espoused. More specifically, they blame the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which limited property tax increases in the state. Attributing our problems to Prop 13 is an argument I've seen presented many times over the past few years.

Jones and Redmond assert that "opposition to taxes is now deeply embedded in the California electorate." Their lament, essentially, is that we are in this predicament because taxes aren't high enough. Granted, primarily because of Prop 13, California's property tax rate is below the national average. That, however, is only part of the picture.

California has the highest state income tax rates and the highest sales tax rates in the nation. We are first out of 50 in those rather dubious achievements. (Our top income tax rate, 10.55 percent, is almost twice the average of the other 49 states.) I shudder to think how high our tax rates would be if the electorate were not under the spells of Ronald Reagan, Howard Jarvis (described by the authors as "a Republican landlord lobbyist") and Milton Friedman. In spite of Prop 13, state government expenditures have increased more than 7 percent per year since its passage.

Jones and Redmond seem to believe that advocacy of free market economics and opposition to government growth started in California 40 years ago. They also believe that California is such a trendsetter that the philosophy contaminated the rest of the country, and the whole world as well.

Argument for the benefits of free market economics has been around for well over 200 years and was first elaborated by a Scotsman, Adam Smith, with the publication of "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776. The most famous tax revolt, the Boston Tea Party, occurred in 1773.

It apparently doesn't occur to the authors that the kinds of liberal and progressive policies they advocate might have played in California's decline. Because they refuse to look inward or take any accountability, they can only conjure up strained explanations as to why someone else must be to blame. All the state's problems are caused by the ghosts of three dead white guys (Reagan, Jarvis and Friedman).

California's fundamental problem is its anemic economic growth rate. Our state has the fourth highest unemployment rate (12.2 percent) and the second highest home foreclosure rate. Is California in such relatively bad shape because its citizens are not taxed enough? That doesn't make sense.

The opposite is much closer to the truth. Because of high taxes and irrationally burdensome regulations, California is near the top of the list in regard to hostility toward business. According to a ranking by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, only New Jersey has a more business-unfriendly environment. Californians can, if they choose, burden businesses with ever more demands and regulations. They pay a high price, however. Choices have consequences. Intel Corporation, the chip manufacturer that started in California, announced earlier this year that it would be investing $7 billion in new manufacturing facilities over the next two years -- in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico. There's a pattern there. Are they avoiding California because our taxes are too low?

Jones and Redmond recognize the negative effects of the kinds of policies they espouse. "Certainly, turning over more public resources to free market capitalists, cutting taxes and slashing government regulation will spur private sector economic growth, just as advocates claim. But that growth has a cost. The wealth won't be shared by everyone." Their argument essentially says there's no point in creating wealth if it's not equally distributed.

In other words, if the beneficial impacts of some policy are not equally shared by everyone, they must be rejected. Such a standard creates an absolutely impossible hurdle for any human action. For Redmond and Jones, income equality is more important than economic growth. I have never understood those kinds of priorities. The damage done by unemployment is a real and unrecoverable loss. Ironically, it also hurts government revenues and, in the end, those citizens who depend on government-funded programs. If Redmond and Jones really want more money flowing into state coffers they should be welcoming policies that encourage economic vitality.

Jones and Redmond regret that corporations don't pay as much taxes as they should, partly because of Prop 13. The fantasy that corporations are capable of paying taxes is one of the most naïve beliefs of the left. In the real world, the world all of us actually live in, only humans are capable of paying taxes. Corporations are only intermediaries. They can write the checks to the IRS or the Franchise Tax Board, but they can't bear the "burden" of taxes any more than cows or real estate can.

Corporations connect with humans in three ways -- owners, employees and customers. The burden of corporate taxes falls on some combination of those three groups. Corporate taxes result in some combination of reduced profits for shareholders, higher prices for customers and lower wages for employees. The actual distribution of the effects varies from industry to industry, case to case. The conclusion of most recent research indicates that the principal burden falls on the employees of corporations. If your objective is to soak the rich, the corporate tax is an extremely crude and counterproductive means for doing so. Many on the left despise corporations and have no interest in actually analyzing their policies, so the corporate tax is one of their favorite weapons of choice.

California will survive and we will muddle through somehow. Unfortunately, we are squandering our vast potential by misreading the fundamental sources of our chronic problems.