Posted by zog
on June 14, 2009, 10:38 am, in reply to "A billion bucks!"
..this link:
Insulation moves in the UK
"But campaigners are also baffled that this sort of labour-intensive home insulation has not been more of a priority in the recent fiscal stimulus as it creates so many "shovel-ready" jobs. It is the sort of stimulus recommended by the former chief Treasury economist Lord Nicholas Stern."...no idea why they are "baffled", this has to be one of the easier things to analyze in politics, energy companies are in the business of selling you more, and more expensive, energy.
They *aren't* in the business of selling you less, and less expensive energy, or even worse, offering products that could be paid off, selling solutions that would result in individuals becoming energy independent.. There is no market incentive for them to do anything other than minimize energy savings. Heck, not sure about the UK, but in the US, they might even get sued by investors if they sought to reduce their market share! Bad analogy time...how would it fly if say Microsoft went public and said "Ya know, XP seems to be working well enough for most people, so just save your cash and stick with that!". They would get sued immediately by their shareholders. But with energy. we keep expecting that these energy companies are going to do something similar...ain't gonna never, ever happen. Is Wallstreet going to push a huge massive national insulation drive? Sure, some short term profits for like insulation makers stocks, but they can't control or cartel-ize all the money made in the retrofit..so it doesn't get pushed at the highest levels to the degree it could.
The car scrapping idea mentioned in the article got pushed harder, because it results in MORE sales and profits for car companies. Conserving energy results in LESS sales, and this is the primary reason this is always at the bottom of the list when it comes to big corporations and government policies, which are dictated by "maximizing shareholder value" for the upper levels of the money skimming industry.
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