No. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_process

I completely agree with your post, however I think the utility monopoly shouldn't just be regulated by the government, but owned by it. Then it's a non-profit where profits are ploughed back into infrastructure improvement, or lower taxes for the population of the state.

You'll always need the utility that does the load-balancing, that maintains the high-voltage grid, etc.; I don't see a million 220v wires from a city towards the nearby Aluminium smelter. So that is a tax that all electricity providers have to pay into, for sure.

Anything that generates electricity that is not a huge power plant is a threat to the electric company.

It's nice to formulate issues as us-vs-them, but I don't understand why that is true:

• anything that generates electricity in Arizona that is not a huge power plant is competition to the electric company
• the electric company is owned by the Arizona state
• the Arizona state is owned by the Arizona people
• so this form of competition would lead to a conflict between the Arizona citizens and the other Arizona citizens

I.e. it would need to be resolved by planning and budgetting; a *completely internal problem* for the Arizona state organisation.

Hey, found another one today: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/fukushima_fearmongers_its_your_fault_japan_has_dumped_co2_targets/ (Lewis Page from the Register)

"But WWF and the other hard greens know the realities too: they know that no carbon + no nukes = economic misery. They just don't care - their plan is that humanity should abandon economic growth and sink into poverty.
So those are the options. Air full of carbon, nuclear power, or shivering hungry in the dark. ®"

You:

So, we sacrifice a great deal now in order to possibly enrich our long-distant descendants, who will be much wealthier than we are.

Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of the UEA:

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel"

Oh noes!?! Who am I going to believe? I think the sheik probably had better info than you.

I know many people (on Slashdot even) have claimed that switching to a low carbon energy infrastructure would result in global poverty.

The meme I've seen is "if we do something like the tree-huggers demand of us, we'll all be shivering in the dark". It would be interesting to map its origin and spread.

So... like Northern states even in the USA's midwest? ...

I wouldn't know..

YES! Strong correlation, in fact!

It turned out that in Scandinavia, 99.999 (+/- 0.003)% of the perps belonged to the Homo Sapiens race, with a few Alces Alces Møöse thrown in (probably sentenced for their drunk and disorderly conduct ;-) ).

So you're saying American Christians are technically/culturally Jews; where in Judaïsm the impact of the story of God telling Avraham/Abraham/Ibrahim to slaughter his son Yitzhak/Isaäc/Ishmael is considered as more religiously instructive than, say, the Sermon on the Mount.

It's interesting to see that, even if the stories are the same in different cultures, the emphasis on which of the stories are of greatest importance can make such a difference.
Mind you, in all the Abrahamic religions God settles for a barbecue, which is a lot kinder than the ancient ritual of the statue of Moloch (WARNING: link causes distress).

Some people feel a bit down when the Winter half-year starts in November: all maintenance and hobby projects that you wanted to finish outside have to be postponed under 1 1/2 meters of snow. Also, November can be very very gloomy (no snow yet and less than 8 hours daylight).

The right to lure burglars within range of his pressure cooker (disguised as a backpack).

This story makes me feel a bit down, so I'll just dump the lyrics of the Dead Kennedys' prophetic song here, and go do something more useful than Slashdot:

We're sorry but you're no longer needed Or wanted, or even cared about here
Machines can do a better job than you And this is what you get for asking questions

The unions agree sacrifices must be made Computers never go on strike
To save the working man You got to put him out to pasture


Looks like we'll have to let you go
Doesn't it feel fulfilling to know
That you, the human being, are now obsolete
And there's nothing in hell we'll let you do about it


Soup is good food
You make a good meal
Now how do you feel to be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash?
(etc. etc.)

Link: http://lyrics.wikia.com/Dead_Kennedys:Soup_Is_Good_Food. You'll need it, because Jello Biafra sings very unclearly even at the best of times.

It probably depends a lot on the cultural and moral values of each society: in a society that believes in the values of capitalism, the economic values will trickle up to the "1%", who will be quite happy with all the money and power and replacing all those potential "saboteurs" (original meaning) with obedient factory robot slaves.

Until the inevitable revolution, of course, when their heads will be proudly paraded around by their own industrial robots (operated by the workers).

In a society that believes in the values of socialism, I't imagine that this trend would evolve into the logical extreme of a basic income ("too much to die from, but too little to live comfortably"). A bit like the old people's basic pensions in Europe. Motivation is that it's better for the "1%" that all old people grumpily can afford their apartment's heating bills and a monthly bag of potatoes, rather than the obvious shame of having the people that built up your society and paid income tax all their life, begging and starving and freezing in the streets.

An important factor in social democratic thought in Europe was, that the masses need to be educated, to free them from the chains of ignorance that the bosses wrought ("the police exists to keep you obedient, the director exists to keep you poor, and the priest exists to keep you ignorant and happy with your lot").

But as you point out, educating the masses won't help much if they still will be unemployed/unemployable, because UNLIKE the early 20th century, they will never reach the level of income necessary to buy the capitalist goods (computers and 3D printers excluded).

I guess you didn't read TheRegister: Boffins build R2-WEE-2: The urine-powered robot with a human-like heart