Today's Rocky Mountain News featured a Stuart Steers article on the bizarre reaction to the City of Denver's Green print. Some national advocates of a 'Do Nothing' approach to global warming are criticizing the City for using global warming to impose communism on the city. In fact the opposite is true!

The Green print represents a bold plan to combat global warming. Virtually all of the elements of the Green represent win win solutions for global warming and building Denver's economy.

Take one of the most controversial elements of the plan - charging people who use more electricity than rest of us a premium to fund efficiency and renewable energy. The increase cost would also discourage waste. The benefits of investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency are clear - more economic development, stable electricity prices, cleaner air. But there are more benefits and the advocates of a 'Do Nothing' approach to global warming fail to get it.

Denver's per capita energy consumption is increasing by about 1% a year. No matter what the source is - that new energy can be twice as expensive as the electricity from existing power plants. So if you are retiree and your energy use is not increasing but your neighbor just got a plasma tv (which use five times the electricity of a flatscreen LCD), leaves their lights on, and is heating their sidewalks and pool in the winter, why should the retiree pay more for same amount of power as the person wasting increasing amounts electricity? The utility will need to build new plants to meet the increases in demand and those costs will be spread to everyone regardless of whether their use increases. This sounds pretty much like the old style communist regimes, right? (note, the person wasting electricity could accomplish all their goals with energy efficient appliances and solar heating)

The city of Denver is saying: 'we do not want to socialize the cost of people wasting energy.' That's reasonable.

So Denver is taking a market approach to the current system which socializes (like Socialism!) the cost of individual waste. Individual responsibility, no free lunch... that sounds pretty capitalistic to me. What's so loony left about that?