(I)t’s not unrealistic to demand better ways to understand and compare the relative dangers posed by the competing energy sources—oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable options such as solar and wind. That’s almost impossible to do now because so few of the risks associated with these sources are incorporated into their price. The operation of energy markets today actually impedes our ability to rationally assess and prepare for energy-related dangers, because the prices we pay provide such a distorted picture of the true costs, and full risks, of the power we consume.No, but the bipartisan foreign policy establishment won't put a price tag on wars, military spending, spending on private soldiers of fortune like Blackwater and more.
Brownstein goes on to note two main hidden costs: failure to adequately price the cost of possible disaster and failure to account for environmental destruction costs.
Alleged "free marketers" use that second failure to oppose energy efficiency measures, like the federal government's mandated phase-out of old-style incandescent light bulbs.
Leave it to pseudo-free market rationalist Cato to compare apples and oranges with European and American energy costs without talking about hidden American costs.
Ditto for someone from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
More on that issue from Brownstein:
That amounts to a subsidy for fossil fuels, particularly coal, which emits the most carbon; one recent National Academy of Sciences study calculated that the “hidden” cost of coal-fired electricity (measured in both conventional pollutants and carbon) approaches the price that consumers now pay. The federal liability limits likewise subsidize oil drillers and nuclear-plant operators: If they needed to cover more (much less all) of their risk, they would pay more for insurance and capital investment, and the price of the power they produce would rise.People who know environmental issues, not to mention climate science issues, know that's just the tip of the subsidies issue. As noted above, our large military footprint in the Middle East is another such subsidy.
Beyond that, if we priced in the subsidies for all forms and sources of energy, we might just push people into conserving more of it, Cato and industry flacks aside.
On the first issue, William Saletan of Slate has an excellent article, in the wake of Japan's nuclear concerns, about how nuclear power is saving lives every day compared to fossil fuels.
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