Solar vs. deserts; or how "public" ownership of resources produces zero-sum political fights over preferences
Ron Bailey, Science Correspondent of Reason Online, reported recently “how some environmental
groups are fighting the development of utility-scale solar power in the
Mojave Desert.”
As I have posted elsewhere on the role our government plays in compounding our disputes over differing preferences, I copy my comments on Bailey’s thread here:
TokyoTom | August 18, 2008, 6:34am | #
The
real problem with many of these environmental fights is that either
governments own the resources or the economic actor is highly
regulated. With the deserts privatized and freer markets, we’d see
solar if it made economic sense (including the costs of paying off
nimby-ists).
While we are unlike to see complete privatization of state or federal
lands, we’d see greater citizen enthusiasm if the states and the feds
would be so kind as to rebate a hefty chuck of the land-use royatly
payments to us (with a cut to the related bureacrats to incentivize
them to get good rates and to make sure proceeds are actually
collected; citizens and public prosecutors would be similarly
ncentivized).It is the lack of sufficient revenue sharing by a greedy federal
government that has led state governors to block further OCS leasing,
and has given enviros no incentives to agree on ANWR drilling (as I
note in the linked blog post).Likewise, a rebated carbon tax would be a million times better than the
ethanol mandates, renewable mandates, the Warner Lieberman pork and the
Pickes’ ad blitz for solar hand-outs. The problem is a government that
wants to have a finger in every pie – citizens ought to be insisting on
a direct cut, instead of letting politicians direct all of the spoils
(which is the REAL cause of the constant deadlock).
(emphasis added)
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