Rachel Maddow, D.Phil
MSNBC Broadcast Journalist

Dr. Maddow,

Thank you for your contributions to the world of journalism. While so many of your colleagues are challenged to stay inside the lines of your profession's proverbial ethics, your smiling face appears on my screens delivering a "better reality". Your recent series of broadcasts regarding our nation's history and heritage are indeed inspiring, however, they do not reflect an understanding of current resource availability. To better convey my point (in your own style) I will share the following quotes from the movie, "Six Days Seven Nights"...

Robin: Aren't you one of those guys?
Quinn: What guys?
Robin: Those guy guys, you know, those guys with skills.
Quinn: Skills?
Robin: Yeah. You send them into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a Q-tip and they build you a shopping mall. You can't do that?

Repinned from Funny Things by Nancy Roycraft

@etcgreen

Even if we use your number of 2.8 miles/kwh, the Nissan still costs 4 cents/mile @12 cents/kwh. Or 1/2 the cost of a Jaguar @ the national B100 average of $4.20/gallon.

Response...

With respect, please take the time and make the effort to understand the world around you. Today, the average kwh rate in CA is about $.24 rather than your suggested $.12kwh. Many areas of CA are now peaking at $.38kwh. This is the result of clean air legislation and increased renewable energy sources. Should the rest of the country opt for the same level of clean air legislation, the kwh price in many parts of the country would rise to 3-4x this cost - over $1kwh - due to the lower number of photons and greater amounts of rain, hail, snow, ice, humidity, tornadoes, hurricanes, ..., in those areas. A more viable alternative is the proverbial National Smart Grid where solar and wind power are long hauled from their optimum generation sources to other parts of the nation. Though this plan, by all estimates, will require a double digit $T something commitment (in the range of $12T-$25T by most reports) - to power the states that need the energy. This also results in something close to $1/kwh.

Dexter Ford, the long respected auto industry journalist, recently had an article printed in the NYT, "As Cars Are Kept Longer, 200,000 Is New 100,000". I was surprised at what he thought was important in that article until I began "walking a mile in his moccasins", if you will. Here is a guy who has been writing about cars for decades. His very livelihood is based on the evaluation of new models - year after year. Has this man or for that matter, has any individual so well embedded in the auto industry ever driven a single vehicle over 200,000 miles? To most of these people, the very concept is probably a concerning and potentially embarrassing thought.