In an earlier post, I asked readers to consider four thought experiments regarding the reprioritization of our public-policy work on energy. Here is my response to your much-appreciated comments and a proposed path forward.

Thought Experiment 1. Let’s demote oil and climate change to secondary status as analytical issues.

To my surprise, no one seemed to disagree with my proposal. Yet popular media coverage of these issues is probably 90+%.

Thought Experiment 2. Let’s elevate the dialogue about fundamental electric industry reform to primary status.

Again to my surprise, no one seemed to disagree with my proposal, which leads me to wonder why this issue does not get the attention it deserves. My best guess is you cannot boil the solution down to a three word sound bite (Drill Baby Drill!

“Locavores” believe that food produced near final consumers is superior in myriads of ways to distant imports. While they might disagree among themselves on what exactly constitutes a “local foodshed” (a 100-mile radius or the whole state of California?), they have for the most part internalized long standing populist and romantic grievances against modern agricultural science, fossil fuels, large corporations and globalization.

As they see things, our modern-day genetically-modified “corn-utopia” is soaking up a rapidly vanishing petroleum pool while delivering junk food, cancer epidemics, rural poverty, and agricultural pollution. The way forward, they tell us, actually requires several steps backward to a simpler time when consumers personally knew and trusted the farmers that fed them…

Belief Confronts Reality

Fortunately, the locavores’ dire vision is at odds with the relevant data. Although it undoubtedly pains most of them to hear this, we live (much) longer and healthier lives than our ancestors; the overall state of our environment has improved significantly over the last century; and our food supply is cheaper, safer and more secure than ever before.…

“[Romney] will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits.”

– Romney campaign spokesman, “Wind Energy Tax Credit Splits Obama, Romney,” Des Moines Register, July 30, 2012.

The extension of the 20-year old Production Tax Credit (PTC) for windpower and other qualifying renewable energy is a wedge issue in the national political campaign. And with growing state-level pushback against government subsidies for qualifying renewables, it is time to ‘put-up-or-shut-up’ for on-grid wind and solar technologies.

And it was VERY good news that the Romney campaign issued a statement two days ago officially opposing an extension of the wind PTC. The other side wants him to walk it back, but few tangibles epitomize the fluff and failure of government-knows-best than taxpayer investments in wind power and solar power

AWEA: In Panic Mode

Meanwhile, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has pumped millions of dollars into a lobbying campaign to secure the PTC’s extension.…

Special political favor at the local, state, and federal levels have created an artificial industry: industrial windpower. Massive turbines have resulted in negative ecological and economic effects. Rural towns and countryside across the USA have become the dumping grounds for massive infrastructure producing a paltry amount of remote, unreliable energy.

For many enjoying rural life, in particular, an invasion by industrial wind installations has turned environmentalism on its head.

New York State has more than its share of such malinvestment and damage. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli recently reported that tax exemptions by NYS’s Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs) were not creating jobs and “shifting tax burdens” from mega-corporations to local residents.

As a result, we have the spectacle in Upstate New York of taxpayer-subsidized industrial wind installations driving people from their homes — while further endangering the populations of eagles, hawks, herons, cranes, bats, and all magnificent flying creatures.…