Reply To: Branson Prize: $25M for removing 1 Gigaton CO2/year

[tcg]

As a California resident, I have watched the barrage of ads for prop. 16 with keen interest. Clearly it is intended to preserve the grip of private companies on power generation by hiding behind a tax-and-spend smokescreen. The tipoff is that it is aimed solely at a municipality’s ability to assume debt for a specific purpose, power generation, and not against general indebtedness. So far I have seen no ads against the proposition.

In my perspective, this is a struggle to preserve power generation as a prerogative of privately owned, for-profit companies and keep it out of the hands of public entities. If FF is a success, prop. 16 will certainly make it more difficult for cities and counties to make use of the technology, but I believe this difficulty would vary from community to community. Could the City Council in my town convince 2/3 of the voters that with perhaps half a million of borrowed money, we could cheaply generate all our own electricity and for a similar sum we could purify sea water for all our water needs? Personally I think this would be an easy sell. A more conservative town may not vote the same way, but it would be their loss, and they would continue to pay high prices, suffer water rationing and brownouts.

Even if the proposition passes, it would only take a few communities climbing the 2/3 voter wall and benefiting to bring everybody else on line, so to speak.