“Capitalism has a built-in incapacity to generate legitimations of itself, and it is particularly deprived of mythic potency; consequently, it depends upon the legitimating effects of its sheer facticity or upon association with other, non-economic legitimating symbols.”

– Peter Berger, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality and Liberty

In Part 1 of this two-part series, conventional, market-based electricity was described as inescapably lacking an overarching myth that gives it legitimacy against postmodern renewable energy, global-warming ideology, and energy regulation in California. This insight comes from sociologist Peter L. Berger’s 1986 book The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality and Liberty.

Given Capitalism’s mythic deprivation, what then can be done, if anything, to re-legitimate cheap, clean or cleaner conventional energy and demythologize renewable energy?

Can Anything Be Done?…

All good things to all people. That is how the Obama/EPA Power Plant Rule is being sold this week in the U.S. and around the world.

Lower prices, more jobs, greater security, accelerated innovation. New for old, cleaner for dirtier. Better air and less ailment.  Take the disadvantages of rationing carbon dioxide in U.S. power plants and assert just the opposite. Get others to echo for a ‘shared narrative.’ Think energy postmodernism of wish, want competitive intermittent renewable energy.

Say it is a free lunch. Better yet, say it is a lunch that we are paid to eat.

And all this for a better future. “This is something that is important for all of us,” Obama stated in regard to the proposal. “As parents, as grandparents, as citizens, as folks who care about the health of our families and also want to make sure that future generations are able to enjoy this beautiful blue ball in the middle of space that we’re a part of.”…

“Indeed, a case could be made that politicians have been pushed into a situation such that they have no choice but to approve continued coal-burning, hydro-fracking for increased gas and oil production, and pursuit of oil and gas in extreme and pristine environments.” (James Hansen)

“I am saying that the global energy discussion should be based on facts, not on myths.” (James Hansen)

Yesterday’s post on James Hansen’s new analysis, “Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power and Galileo: Do Scientists Have a Duty to Expose Popular Misconceptions?, discussed how the anti-nuclear, pro-wind strategy of mainstream environmentalism works to increase, not decrease, greenhouse-gas emissions. Such an incredible irony can only be blamed on philosophical fraud, of believing in imaging and emotions rather than reality. [1]

Hansen’s article also speaks energy/political truth to Big Environmentalism in other ways that help steer the energy debate towards realism and away from postmodernism.…

“The real problem is that the price of water in California, as in most of America, has virtually nothing to do with supply and demand…If water was priced to reflect scarcity, a decrease in supply would lead to an increase in price, and people would demand less… My system is designed to reduce demand rather than cover costs.” – David Zetland, The Water Shortage Myth (Forbes, 2008)

In Part I of this series we discussed how a proposed Drought Environmental Water Market does not meet the criteria of a market nor would the prices produced from such a system reflect Fair Market Value. The proposal for an environmental water market by a group of experts from the University of California, Davis, the Public Policy Institute of California and law schools at the University of California and Stanford (the “U.C.…