Liberal Talk Radio

If we’re going to have the clean, fossil-fuel-free future that everyone keeps promising us, we’re going to need cheap electricity, and lots of it. And we’re going to need to get that electricity from something other than coal. Our options include:

1. Nuclear
2. Hydroelectric dams
3. Wind
4. Solar

Biofuels like ethanol will be great for powering cars, but they’re not really efficient for turning into electricity for the rest of our energy needs.

So, we’ve got these four potential sources of non-coal-based electricity. I covered nuclear energy yesterday. Hydro power is controversial: it wreaks havoc on river ecosystems, including our much-beloved pacific salmon population. And yet, hydro is what we have, especially here in the Northwest.

Today’s Seattle P-I tells us beloved our hydro company, the Bonneville Power Authority, actually is. Northwest politicians of every political stripe, from Western WA’s liberal democrats to Idaho’s staunchest conservatives, are blocking the Bush administration’s efforts to tax BPA money in an attempt to balance the budget:

That long-running fact of life in Congress is on display yet again this year as a plan by the White House to siphon $1 billion in excess BPA profits over the next 10 years has run into heavy opposition.

Critics call the plan unfair and a tax on ratepayers, even though it would raise the average power bill by less than $25 a year. The White House says the request is reasonable and necessary if the deficit is to be cut in half by 2009.

$1B over 10 years? Are you kidding me? How about instead you just collect the $7 billion that the oil and gas companies already owe you?! Why in God’s name are we trying to tax clean hydro energy while we reward dirty energy like oil and coal?

It’s moments like these when even the most reasonable among us are entirely justified in concluding that Bush and Cheney are completely enslaved to the oil industry, and utterly uninterested in getting serious about energy independence. No matter how often they say otherwise.