Wednesday, March 06, 2013

NC GOP: "Energy Efficiency, Bad!"

House Bill 201 is being heard in the Regulatory Reform Committee today. It would roll back energy efficiency standards in North Carolina building codes.

That's the intellectual playing field we're on in Raleigh these days.

One of the primary sponsors of this piece of brilliance is Cabarrus County rep Larry Pittman, who early in 2012 was advocating public hangings. Plus he wanted all the doctors who have given abortions to be first in line for the noose. I believe he may have offered to hold the coats of the executioners. The other primary sponsor, John Torbett, made money as a house "rehabilitator," so he would naturally know every cheapskate shortcut and have plenty of experience resenting those pesky energy efficiency rules.

The real beneficiary of lowering energy efficiency standards, though, would have to be Duke Energy, which is already well on its way to purging members of the Utilities Commission (Senate Bill 10) so that their former employee, Governor Whatisname, can appoint the people who'll vote on Duke Energy's requested rate hike.

Yup, the NC GOP is transforming government, though we have to observe that a bunch of kerosene (or fracked gas) and a single match would do the job faster.

2 comments:

brushfire said...

There is an idea called time span of discretion that analyzes time horizons vs responsibility levels of workers. Workers with low responsibility such as factory line workers tend to think of their jobs in terms of hours. Company executives are supposed to think in terms of years. Our founding fathers were thinking along a time span of generations. The right-wing extremists running our state are focused on short-term goals and immediate profits, while ignoring the long-term costs to our environment, our health, and our children.

Anonymous said...

While the conservative efforts are indeed effective in the long term, they will also facilitate the survival of our county despite the efforts of the liberals to turn us into a third world society.