Friday, March 28, 2008


Leaders should end subsidies



For decades our economic and political systems have sunk huge subsidies, tax write-offs, and financial incentives into the petroleum and coal industries. With such great incentives, that's where large corporate-owned utilities focus their efforts. This, even though petroleum and coal reserves are becoming more costly to obtain, accessing those drags us even deeper into global conflicts, and the burning of those fuels cause grave dangers to our health and the world's environment.

The Iowa Utility Association just released a study showing that simply by implementing energy efficiency programs and strengthening requirements for such, Iowans could achieve nearly 1,500 MW of electricity reductions for about 3 cents per kilowatt. Iowans currently pay approximately 8 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt for coal-fired power, which also doesn't consider our additional bills for increasing public health and environmental costs resulting from multitudes of toxic emissions from coal-fired plants.

Our lawmakers need to pass bold new energy policies that remove huge subsidies, financial incentives, and tax write-offs from petroleum and coal, and move these over to the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Only when the lure of vast money and profits are shifted, will corporations voluntarily move in this direction.

Major investment firms have withdrawn interest in financing new coal plants not addressing greenhouse gas emissions effectively, considering these far too risky. Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, and the USDA program have all made this decision.

We need to ask hard questions before blindly accepting the glowing pictures presented by profit-driven big utilities.

Mary McBee
Tama






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