TAKE A MOMENT TO READ THIS: Eminent domain isn’t the only way in which the state makes natural gas pipelines artificially feasible. Pipelines also depend on liability caps or regulatory preemption of tort liability for leaks, contamination of groundwater and earthquakes associated with fracking and pipeline transport. Its not just natural gas, but also coal and oil, that are artificially cheap and economical as a result of state-granted subsidies and privileges. Coal and oil, like natural gas, depend on privileged access to land in the federal domain from which ordinary individual homesteaders have been excluded — or even on land that was stolen either from First Nations or white settlers. The Bundy ranch, site of a recent standoff between a rancher and the federal government, is situated on what had originally been tribal land. And a lot of Appalachian coal mining takes place on land that had already been homesteaded in the days before fully developed state and county governments or regular land titles, then stolen by mining companies with better lawyers. All fossil fuel industries depend on the same liability caps and regulatory preemption of tort law. [there is an] unwarranted assumption that the level of demand for energy is inelastic, and that the present energy dependency of our economy has nothing to do with assorted subsidies to fossil fuels and transportation. Besides all the fossil fuels subsidies and privileges mentioned above, present levels of long-distance transportation use also reflect heavy government subsidies. The civil aviation infrastructure was built almost entirely at government expense using eminent domain, and jumbo jets only became economically viable after WWII because the Cold War heavy bomber program enabled the aircraft industry to make full use of the expensive dies required to build them. The car culture has grown far larger than it otherwise would have because of urban planning and zoning, subsidized utilities for new subdivisions and use subsidies and eminent domain to support freeway construction. The taxpayer-subsidized Interstate Highway System is also a massive subsidy to artificially long corporate supply and distribution chains. ...Without government’s thumb on the scale to facilitate the consumption of energy, we might just use less of it. We might buy food and manufactured goods produced in our own communities, live closer to the places we work and shop, and keep more energy-efficient homes. excerpted from: Keystone East: Not as Reasonable as Reason Thinks by KEVIN CARSON
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:24:32 +0000
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