Ballot questions -- STATE 3. Free market for electricity -- NO
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Wed, 11/02/2016 - 5:16am
Digest and arguments:
http://files.constantcontact.com/d2820800501/2f6efdcd-adba-4a65-8752-2ee...
Actual text:
http://carson.org/home/showdocument?id=51140
What? Peter is against the free market? I hate to say it, but this is another dishonest proposition on the ballot this year. Oh, it sure sounds good, a free market in energy. The problem is, if we DID have a free market, and if we DID believe in a free market, and if we did practice what we believe, we would not need to pass a law to make it free -- we would simply repeal the laws that had replaced the previously existing free market with the legal fiction of a regulated monopoly called a "utility."
The other problem is that this is not a proposition to allow a free market. This is just another ruse for "green" energy. And the reason that's a problem is that the economics of "green energy" will never make it competitive with fossil, nuclear and hydroelectric power. Wind and solar will always require massive subsidies to make them look competitive with the others. Also, while it is technically possible and economically practical to make fossil, nuclear and hydro power environmentally safe, the inescapable fact is that the manufacturing process to build solar panels and wind mills is by itself far more detrimental to the environment than the extraction and use of conventional fuels, and the operation of "green energy" plants is lethal to wildlife, especially to birds that are chopped to pieces or fried mid-flight.
When I was a kid, my father used to mock the something-for-nothing crowd by saying that they just want to look up in the sky and expect roast pigeon to fall into their mouths. Well, hang around a solar farm and it just might happen that way.
