I wrote about Dickensian villain Don Blankenship yesterday on A More Perfect Market, and, as usual, I watched 15-20 minutes of my day disappear as I struggled to title the post.

I went with Gotta Love the Man's Mustache, Though.

And it was kind of a stretch of a title, because, honestly, at first, I wasn't really all that impressed with his mustache.  I mean it was definitely exciting to see that he had one, exciting to know that he was not afraid to rock sculpted facial hair.  But, at a glance, the mustache really didn't look like anything special.

At a glance.

Look closer, however, and notice the attention to detail.  Dude clearly does some serious maintenance.  Perfect straight lines from the corners of the mouth to the nostrils.  Extraordinary symmetry.  A classic trapezoid.

And it is totally weird that I'm writing this and thinking this and look at blurry far away pictures of coal executives and assume.  But I'm convinced that these observations are not only truths but extremely important truths to acknowledge and spread.

The More Perfect Union speech in Philadelphia was a beautiful thing, but I think this is the Campaign 2008 moment that'll stick with me longest.

I'll remember it for two reasons.

A. I think it's important to keep in mind that inflated tires would have just as much oil import relief impact as expanded drilling.  Neither would do much, but nor would either be entirely trivial.  And the fact that something simple and inexpensive and habitual like tire inflation can be non-trivial is very cool.  But the big lesson, I think, is that the people our political system tends to choose to lead our government are not well equipped to deal with huge, long term problems like the fact that the world economy depends heavily on a scarce fuel that both earns big money for dangerous people and the use of which does terrifying damage to the natural systems on which we depend for food and breath and wonder.  They debate largely symbolic issues like tire gauges vs. Alaskan drilling, not big fundamental energy questions, and they do it because we make our decisions based on those symbolic issues, and that's a bummer. 

B. A lot of people in this country do take pride in being ignorant, and that's both dangerous and sad.  Seeing Obama call them out, however, is hopeful.  If our leaders are going to participate in solving those huge, long term problems, they'll have to be more than just populist mouthpieces.  They'll have to be better than the rest of us: calm in crisis, selfless, and open to radical new ideas.  Condemning the anti-intellectual (anti-knowledge, anti-learning, anti-curiosity) attitude is a good step.

I'm the editor of the Acorn Energy blogging effort.  Apparently, I'm too radical to actually author anything, but they think I can communicate, so I'm helping others get their thoughts out.

John, our CEO, is going to be the primary voice, and he and I are trying to work out a collaborative writing process. 

We tried a straight ghost write the other day, and I took his idea in a bit of an unexpected direction.  Unexpected for John at least.  Things made total sense to me.

He wanted to express his thoughts about pain and how it relates to energy crises, and, as we were discussing, he mentioned Jimmy Carter and what went down in the 70s and 80s.  I thought Jimmy'd be a nice little addition to the post.

John's a Republican, however, so he disagreed.  Apparently, for Republicans, admitting admiration for Jimmy Carter is like admitting that you shot an amateur porn in college.

I kinda like the little post, however, so I don't want to let it go to waste.

...

There are two kinds of pain.  The pain of discipline, and the pain of regret.

The pain of discipline is the frustration of restraint.  It's deciding not to eat that second piece of cheesecake.

The pain of regret is the digestion of unwanted consequences.  It's the stomachache.

In the 1970s, we had an energy crisis, and, despite Jimmy Carter's best efforts, we chose not to restrain ourselves.  We held energy prices low and burned burned burned all the coal and oil we could find.  Our hands and faces were sticky with graham cracker crust.

More than 30 years later, again we have a crisis.  And, again, we have a choice.  We can restrain ourselves, or we can keep eating poison cheesecake.

I excited about this crisis.  I think we know better than to eat the cheesecake this time.  I'm excited about the changes restraint is going to bring.  Nothing like hunger and discipline to sharpen senses and spur creativity. 

Our energy economy is a mess.  We're sourcing the wrong fuels from the wrong places.  We're transmitting and distributing electrons through frayed and leaky wires.  Most of our machines are brainless and inefficient.  And we waste waste waste without regard for tomorrow.

But, as prices rise, we're waking up.  We're rethinking our behavior, rethinking our systems, rethinking our businesses, and rethinking opportunity.

This crisis and this period of restraint are going to force us to create a new world.  New behavior.  New systems.  New businesses. 

It's going to take a lot of work.  None of it'll be easy.  But if we embrace the pain as a constant reminder that we have an opportunity to build a new world, then we're going to have a lot of fun doing it.

...

Poor Jimmy.  Dude gets such a bad rap.  I bet he was a perfectly ok president.

My colleague Brent is so excited about baking his own charcoal and using it to fertilize the fields that he's sent me a video about El Dorado and the black soils the goldsmiths left behind.

HG, the farmer on whose fields Brent wants to run his experiment, was raving again the other day about Norman Uphoff's rice revolution.

And there's something about solar thermal technology and the American Southwest that just seems inevitable.

Just throwing it out there.

Low tech has potential.  I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with high tech.  I love high tech.  But I also like simplicity.  I like biomimickry.  I like energy efficiency.  I like elegance.  I like avoiding brute force.

I do not approve of pdfs, but apparently some people don't like to create web pages:

http://www.capmarkets.com/ViewFile.asp?ID1=250483&ID2=246878081&ssid=2&directory=11758&bm=0&filename=ENER0721_spec.pdf

That's from Stanford Group, and it's commentary and predictions on what energy legislation is in the works and which of it actually has a chance of getting passed without heavy dilution and compromise.

I don't know nearly enough to make the arguments I do (if you want to hear someone that knows what he's talking about, listen to Amory Lovins), but, apparently, I'm not afraid to share my in-process opinions and pretend they're more than just half-formed.  The following is an email I sent to some Acorn people in reaction to the Stanford Group pdf:

All these Washington proposals are totally ridiculous.  The US government shouldn't be wasting its time tinkering to try to lower oil prices.

A. High oil prices are good for the world in the long term.  They spur both technological innovation and responsible consumer behavior. 

2. If this were a developing economy in danger of starving, then MAYBE it's the government's role to keep energy prices artificially low.  We shouldn't forget, however, that most people living in the US are RIDICULOUSLY rich compared to people south of the equator and elsewhere in the developing world.  In the US, we can cope.  We can spend less, consume less.  It's not a big deal.  Yes, it'll mess with our consumption driven economy, but, honestly, wouldn't it be smart for us to rethink a little bit just how much we want our economic well being tied to Tickle Me Elmo sales?  Again, long term, I think it would be great if we could disrupt and adjust this spend spend spend borrow borrow borrow economy.  

D. If the government wants to keep the economy cooking (and the tax revenue rolling in), how about investing in the old and busted infrastructure?  Build a little efficiency into the system.  Get your cargo from point A to point B on well greased wheels along friction free tracks; don't up the horsepower and force it through the mountain.

And, now that the A, 2, D list is over, and I can no longer continue my obscure reference to Home Alone, I'll have to just go with a dash to lead into my fourth point.

-I don't think tinkering will affect anything.  Speculation tinkering.  Drilling tinkering.  Gas tax holiday tinkering.  It's all band aids.  Band aids trying to cure a chronic stomachache (or lung infection, if you want to add some morbidity).

Clearly not the most diplomatic tone I've ever taken.  But oh well.  I think there's legitimate reason to be frustrated with the US government and their instant gratification approaches to lawmaking.  Though, from their perspective, they don't really have much choice.  If they make their constituents make any compromises in the short term, I'm sure opportunistic political opponents will rise up come campaign time, and see how well they can pander their ways into office.

Democracy.  Total bummer sometimes.

In response to the response to my first comment:

http://blog.recycled-energy.com/2008/07/07/the-hare-and-the-tortoise/

http://jdegrazia.posterous.com/inflation-comment

That does make sense. Although I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "shifting resources around."

Basically, you're saying that the government's fear of higher prices means that utilities will make less money and thus invest less in new generation and T&D infrastructure. And, while it's not necessarily a bad thing to keep bureaucratic, status quo loving utilities from deciding the best ways to deal with increasing demand, the wires (and plants?) that the utility investment dollars would build could be helpful in the creation of an infrastructure better capable of integrating distributed generation.

Did I read correctly?

If so, do we need the utilities to help do (or enable) the shifting?

More importantly, however, what is the shifting and how do we make it happen (with or without the utilities' cash and/or blessing)?

In response to:

http://blog.recycled-energy.com/2008/07/07/the-hare-and-the-tortoise/

Any idea how much this costs now and how much it might cost 10 years from now if things continue?

I ask because I wonder at what point this situation starts to affect government spending, national debt, and inflation significantly, affect them to a degree that it becomes glaringly noticeable.

Here's how I understand things (I realize that I don't know nearly enough to be sure about this, but, now that I've added this disclaimer, I feel ok throwing it out there):

If the cost to produce power is higher than the price consumers pay, then the government is subsidizing, covering the portion of the cost it's afraid to let consumers cover themselves.  In theory, the government is using tax revenues to pay for that subsidy.  But, what with the war, other spending black holes, and politicians' fear of raising taxes, tax revenues can't cover everything, and the government is borrowing money to pay for the subsidies. And once the borrowing gets out of control, the government has to print more money to pay off its debts.  Printing more money, of course, means inflation, which means that dollars are less scarce and thus less valuable, and that's a bummer.

So, again, my questions are: How much money are these subsidies costing?  And might it, at some point anyway, be enough that it'll start getting attention enough to hold politicians accountable for cowardly pandering to short term interests?