I wonder when and if environmentalists will be satisfied. I also wonder when the Democrats running this state might consider saying no to them. Japan's Unit 731, medical experiments, and war crimes.

I wonder when and if environmentalists will be satisfied.  I also wonder when the Democrats running this state might consider saying no to them.

If you have been watching long enough, it's interesting to see how the goals have been changing with regard to fossil fuels and climate change.  Depending on your bent, this can look like anything from a conspiracy to an evolving perspective.  

I thought the interview linked first below between Jon Caldara and Amy Cooke provided some interesting examples of this to share.  The whole thing is interesting**, but I want to point you to two particular time markers since they're relevant to what I'm writing about.  

Skip to the 15:45 and 27:05 marks discuss our state's goal (since Polis enunciated it before his first term as governor) to get to 100% renewable energy and various lawsuits which resulted in extra costs for the Comanche power plant outside Pueblo respectively.

What do these two parts have in common?  To me they illuminate a concept I frequently return to:  a question I have for the environmentalists (and the Democrats who serve them) about their policy end game.

They point me to the question I've asked often about other social issues:  assume you have a magic wand, you can do anything without worry about compromise, money, or any other limit.  What would you do with regard to environmental policy?


I say that because I wonder whether ...


--environmentalists/Democrats have an end goal in mind and are just revealing it slowly to us so as to ease us into their vision of our glorious future


--their goals are evolving with time


--whether they pushed for what they thought was achievable in a mixed politics state (a sharing of power between R's and D's) and now that Colorado is deep blue they're going all out


Regardless of whether it's something from my list or something else entirely, history has shown that where we are NOW is not where we were.  

I gave you a virtual king's ransom of links to poke around in if you'd like to flesh out in more detail what I mean, but I'll give you the short story.


For a look at the Comanche story, check out links 2 and 3 below.  Link #2 is to a wiki page on the power plant from which you can (by reading the references) reach out into other detail.  Link #3 is to a text file showing details about the settlement referenced in Caldara and Cooke's discussion.   See in particular Sections 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.  


This was a settlement that resulted in the installation of rather expensive equipment at the power plant to scrub out and monitor emissions from the coal fired plants.  Of note, too, is the look ahead into the future:  it also required a commitment to renewables, money to be given to Pueblo, and a bunch of other goodies squeezed out of Xcel Energy (nee Public Service).


Wait, what am I saying.  I almost forgot.  When those things are squeezed out of the utility company, it isn't the utility that pays it, it's us!  Those that buy that energy.


Moving right along, let's fast forward and see what a difference 15-odd years makes.  Link 4 is to an op ed published by the Sierra Club on the Comanche Plants and what was then the plan Xcel had for coal (and gas) fired energy in this state.


In it you'll read how Xcel's then-version of their Draft Resource Plan met with disapproval from the same group that sued earlier, only this time because it would allow Xcel to depend for far too long on "...dirty, expensive fossil fuels..." while "...further delay[ing] the transition to affordable CLEAN ENERGY [emphasis mine]".

Later in the same op ed, under the heading about how the plan could result in Xcel using natural gas for electrical generation for years to come, you'll come across the following: "Allowing Xcel to build new gas plants will only make it harder for Colorado cities like Denver and Boulder to reach their goals of running on 100 percent RENEWABLE ENERGY [emphasis mine] by 2030, and will make it harder to achieve Governor Polis’ goal of 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY [emphasis mine]  in Colorado by 2040."


The reason for the all caps in the above is to call your attention to shifting goalposts and what seems to be some confusion. 


Are we after eliminating pollution?  Are we after clean energy?  Are we after 100% renewables?


Would any of these ever fully satisfy environmentalists at organizations like Sierra Club?  Would the Democrats ever turn to their rabid environmentalist base and say "enough"?  If we did get to 100% renewables and no fossil fuels anywhere, would they relax, sigh, and move on to other things?


I do wonder because, regardless of the ultimate strategy (or not) here, the goals move and shift.  And only ever to be more strict and less reasonable, regardless of the ultimate cost and regardless of who ends up holding the bag (hint:  it's us the ratepayers).

One last thing to point out.  For this one, let's page Doctor Irony because if we return to the Sierra Club's op ed you'll see lots of talk about how much of a burden things like closing Comanche will put on ratepayers.

Yes, this is the same group that earlier cost ratepayers millions for filters.

Millions for filters on a plant they turn around and, before we've even gotten our money's worth, demand be closed.

Millions for filters on a plant that still has millions of other costs we will get to eat too (see the last link below for how we'll get to pay off water rights that won't be used after the plant's gone).  

Yeah.  Kind of weird they'd bemoan that no?

**I can't help but agree with the contention that we'll (if we continue headlong into removing any and all fossil fuels from this state) face some grid stability issues.  As such, I'm already working on getting a generator and rewiring the important circuits in my house so that I can run them off same in the winter.  

https://www.gem.wiki/Comanche_power_station#cite_note-7


https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/72903/000110465904038771/a04-14466_1ex99d03.htm


https://coal.sierraclub.org/posts/xcel-energys-new-backroom-deal-bad-coloradans-and-climate

https://coloradosun.com/2023/08/07/xcel-pueblo-water-rights-comanche-coal-plant/

Related:

Unsurprisingly Liston's bill that would have merely classified nuclear energy as "clean energy" in state law failed.

Failed on a 3 -4 vote.  From what I've heard (not heard the recording yet) there was some pretty humanizing moments at the end for the sponsor.

Yet another case of what I mention above:  is this environmental movement here about clean energy?  Is there an end goal in mind?  Why are other options off the table?


https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-039

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Continuing with the question of what it is that the Progressives and Democrats running this state want (see the previous post on energy if you've not yet), I would now point you to the discussion on the recent hikes in our state's minimum wage and the effect that's having on restaurants.

As in the previous post, I put to you the question:

How will we know when we've achieved perfection?  What does that look like?

In the context of the minimum wage (the interview below is an interesting one because it delves into the consequences of a hike in minimum wage--including the irony that doing so harms those it's supposed to help by driving technology that replaces humans like those ordering kiosks at McDonalds), this takes the form of asking what the upper limit might be on the minimum wage.

It takes the form of asking what limits there might be on requiring benefits to those that earn it.

I genuinely wonder this and hope one day to get a straight answer from one of our state's politicians.  

Knowing what, if any, limit someone sees on government intrusions like these would go a long way toward making our conversations around such issues more productive.  

As it is right now, from my side of the fence, what I see is increase after increase after increase with no signs of satiety on the part of those who hunger for those increases.

And I can't sit quietly and watch something like that happening.  There's too much harm that can be done by thoughtlessly continuing on the path we're on now.  We've already started to see the effects these moves are having.

We can't afford much more without causing drastic harm to our businesses and economy.  And while it might be tempting to think that the rich are due for a soaking, we should remember a couple things.

--Policies like these harm more than the rich.  They have effects on small businesses too.

--We are not discrete, atomistic economic units that are operating independently.  When businesses pay more, so do we.


https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-mandy-connell-26936030/episode/01-18-24-interview-co-restaurant-association-143929703/

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Japan's Unit 731, medical experiments, and war crimes.

Well, it's that time of the week again.  Last post til Sunday and that means something interesting, unrelated to (current) politics.

Perhaps spurred by the release of the movie Oppenheimer, I have been hearing lots of talk lately about the atomic bomb.  In particular, discussion about the morality of using it, and the morality of pursuing ever stronger atomic weapons (ultimately reaching the zenith of the hydrogen bomb--the "super" you see referenced by Oppenheimer and others).

As I have written about before, it's an okay thing to look back at historical events from the perspective of today, but a full understanding of historical events also involves reckoning with the context in which they happened.  That is, history necessarily involves adopting the thoughts and sentiments of the time in order to try and understand the thinking of those acted contemporaneously.  Not following up with the latter is not history.  One need not condone things, but one cannot say one understands without it. 

I could probably give you a full bibliography of contemporary things to read across the full spectrum of thoughts on the matter (Cold War and atomic history is a passion), but what I want to do here is to share something with you that I recently learned that helps offer some new insight on the decision to use atomic weapons. 

I recently learned about a "lab" (using the word here makes me cringe because the stain of what happened there puts a shadow on the word I'd dislike) the Japanese ran during World War II to do "experiments" on unwilling human subjects.  

I will not go into the details here, but suffice it to say, they're horrific.  They rival the worst of what the Nazis were doing in Europe.  

More can be found at the link below if you're interested.  Look for things about Unit 731.

This, at least to me, shines more light on the kind of regime Japan was operating under during WWII.  It sheds light on the kinds of decisions that were being made by those that ran the country.  It sheds light on how those same leaders viewed human life.**

And those, again at least for me, help inform the decision undertaken about the atomic bomb and Japan.  

One last thing, speaking of historical decisions.  From what I heard about Unit 731, this was almost not known by the public.  By some accident someone found some documentation about it in a thrift shop and went public with it.

As it did with Nazi scientists our own government wanted the information enough that they ignored the terrible things that the Japanese authorities involved did.  The man that ran Unit 731, thanks in part to American decisions, died quietly in his own bed, a fate he didn't at all deserve.

**For more, see the Rape of Nanjing at this site or others.

https://www.pacificatrocities.org