So I’ve been reading about this true cost of accounting for nearly 3 decades and while there has been a lot of accounting done, gubbermint has sat on its ass and delivered nothing in the way of the tax.  In fact, under the Shrubya Reign of Error, they larded the fossil fuel industry with massive additional subsidies in a hellish ‘false cost accounting’ variant that could only have been concocted by a coterie of cthonic cretins on K Street.

The BP oil disaster, however, points to a novel approach for implementing at least a portion of applying ‘external’ costs – forget fossil fuel taxes that lily-livered  Congress will never pass – instead, make the fucking companies pay directly for their messes!

For example, the various oil companies could start with a supervised safety review of the other offshore wells currently in production as well as the 27,000 abandoned wells just in the Gulf of Mexico whose capping were most likely never supervised and which may be decaying as I type.  How about forcing the coal companies to put out the millions of tons of coal burning in thousands of coal seam fires around the world that are spewing noxious chemicals and carbon dioxide with zero benefit to anybody?  Or nuclear power plants paying for permanent storage of the 64,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel that will stay radioactive for up to 250,000 years?

We don’t need technology breakthroughs in alternative energy.  We need to eliminate the unbelievable corporate welfare the industry currently enjoys in subsidies, we need to force the companies to clean up the messes they have already created and to have plans to prevent and correct future messes, and we need to invest in conservation and modern grid infrastructure to properly use the power we do produce.

But first we need to break the link between the conservatives and the fossil fuel companies, otherwise we’ll keep circling the drain, faster with each turn of the spiral.

*Update 7/15/10* Could Congress actually be taking action to investigate those 27,000 abandoned Gulf Wells?  Or is this just more ‘look concerned’ bullshit?

“And I think it’s [Obama's call to have BP stop the leak] part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen,” Paul said.

“We had a mining accident that was very tragic. … Then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. “

Yeah, dumb-ass, accidents do happen.  That’s why we have these things called ‘regulations’ to put technology and processes in place to minimize the chance of accidents occurring, and to mitigate the effects of accidents after they occur.  ”Blame” is quite fitting when an actor such as BP actively worked to undermine additional safety regulations targeted to avoid just such an event, not to mention BP making numerous mistakes, shortcutting their own internal safety regulations and procedures.  Paul – you are a fucking nitwit!

And speaking of stupid, hypocritical conservatives, Loserman is also attacking Obama over the BP oil leak response, complaining about the government’s lack of preparedness.  WTF?  Loserman minced across the aisles during the recent 8-year Repug Reign of Error, gleefully voting against industry regulations left and right, including voting for legislation that would ‘cap’ BP’s liabilities for such a spill at $75M – petty cash, compared the billions this will end up costing in the end.

These two tragedies are perfect examples of industry lobbying, combined with pliant political tools, privatizes profits and socializes the risks of extractive industries.  And yet another compelling argument (as if we needed one) of why we need not merely to stop industry donations to political campaigns, but should also impeach frickin “Justice” Samuel Alito.