From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Winter Firewood
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 01:59:17 -0500

Wendell Dohrmann wrote:

> Doesn't cost anything other than my efforts to cut it. We threw Gore out
> of the state. Hope you tree huggers in CA also enjoy the electric rates
> you are now paying, courtesy of Al and Klinton.

Not at all.  Klinton had nothing to do with the Kalifornia debacle.
Kalifornia's idiotic deregulation plan combined with their extreme
hostility to nuclear power are the root causes.  Georgia's going
through a similar price disaster with their ill-founded experiment
with deregulating natural gas.

There are some things that are natural monopolies that must be
regulated.  Electric power and natural gas are two - at least until
it becomes politically and physically possible for anyone who wants
to compete to build their own power plants, string their own power
lines or lay their own gas pipes.

The natural gas shortage is rooted in the idiotic federal energy
policy that dates back to Carter.  The destruction of the nuclear
power industry is the root cause, for it is the only source of clean
and reliable power in quantities large enough to matter.

Very few people outside the power industry realize what has happened
over the last few years.  The last couple of revisions of the Clean
Air Act* (sic) combined with a very hostile capital market have made
it practically impossible to site and permit any sort of generating
capacity other than natural gas fueled plants.  Whereas 5 years ago
natural gas accounted for only a microscopic portion of the nation's
electrical supply, mainly as peaking capacity, today the installed
base is almost as large as that of nuclear and exceeds by a large
margin that of hydro.  And the installed base of natural gas fired
generating capacity is just about equal to the lost capacity from
the nuclear plants that have been either canceled or shut down in
the last 20 years.

Utilities have plopped down natural gas fueled power plants
practically as fast as they can be built.  The result is the
country's reserve of natural gas, an almost irreplaceable feedstock
for industry and probably the best and certainly the most efficient
residential heating fuel is being squandered on the altar of
eco-nazism.

Never has the old chinese proverb "be careful what you wish for, you
might get it" been more apropos.

John who knows that a little nukey's good for ya!

* Remember that the Clean Air Act that Klinton's EPA enforces is the
one passed by the Republican Congress, presumably with the support
of the scientifically illiterate population at large.