From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The Senate will decide this week whether to follow in California’s footsteps and pass legislation requiring cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change.

Lawmakers are set to vote Monday to begin debate on a bill that could reshape the U.S. economy by requiring industry to pay to emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

Opponents call it a new tax on industry that could raise gas prices and energy bills for consumers.

Now before I knew anything about wind power coming to Delaware, I would be apprehensive about taxing carbon and “increasing the costs to power plants, distributors, and consumers…….

But knowing what I now know, that all carbon prices are about to go ballistic as did our automobile and truck fuel, the faster we leave a carbon based economy, the faster we will pull out of this recession.

Congess just cannot slap the tax on carbon immediately. My recommendation is to start the tax in 2014, giving America 5 years to wean itself off carbon based electricity. Five years could do it…

Wind, particularly offshore wind, if built large enough is the cheapest form of energy available to us today. If solar improves to where it crosses the 10 cents/kwh barrier, it too can become a player….

There is enough wind power capacity in North Dakota to fuel the entire grid of North America…..

The financials show it could be done today for 2.3 cents per kwh… Imagine, all of the US energy needs met at 2.3 cents per kwh. Your $200 monthly electric bill would instead be $40 dollars. Which is right about where it needs to be…….

But not all the wind needs to come from North Dakota, even though it has tremendous potential……Up and down the Eastern seaboard, giant wind farms could drop our prices and save on long distance transmission costs…. From Texas to North Dakota, the wind belt could drive America’s mid section energy prices down to a tolerable level…..

By dropping worldwide demand, we could stop our dependence on energy coming from the Mid East. Being the sole planetary source of 2.3 cents per kwh of electricity, our manufacturing base could again begin to grow in places where it once walked away from union labor……Ohio and Michigan. What automobile company could pass up savings of 20 cents per kwh over what the paid in their home country?

Back to Carbon caps and taxes…..Taxing something that is bad for you at a rather high rate, is ironically a very good thing. It forces you to wean yourself off its toxic properties and seek another solution. It does so expediently. Forcing you to move quickly before your money disappears..unlike a government directive facing appeal after appeal after appeal…….

So raising the price of carbon is in the cards…..the higher the tax, the faster we move to a really cheap source of energy and power…..cheaper than all but the oldest of you can remember……

And if timed right, it won’t cost us a penny. For paying a million dollars for a kwh of coal fired electricity is moot, it there is no kwh of coal fired electricity left to be taxed…. …..