Back in May someone asked Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers what
he thought about a carbon tax,



and he answered, “Why would anyone
want that?”
The Economist answered his question,
29 June 2013,

Tepid, timid:
The world will one day adopt a carbon tax—but only after exhausting all the alternatives,

Winston Churchill famously said America would always do the right
thing after exhausting the alternatives. The right thing in climate

policy for all the big countries is a carbon tax, which is simpler
and less vulnerable to fluctuations in emissions than cap-and-trade
schemes. For years, such a tax has been a non-starter politically.
But as the alternatives are tested to destruction, it deserves to be
looked at again. Current environmental policies will not keep the
rise in global temperatures to below 2°C—the maximum that
most climate scientists think safe. A carbon tax, if stiff enough,
could. Big polluters should assume that such a tax will one day
arrive, and start planning for it now.

Dear Paul Bowers,

Stop being tepid and timid.
Go beyond

closing the dozen coal plants
your company just proposed and GA PSC accepted,
go beyond

the additional 525 megawatts of solar power GA PSC just required
Georgia Power to do,
go beyond

just capping Plant Vogtle cost overruns like Mississippi PSC required for Kemper Coal,
go beyond

misinformation about wind.

You know better than the rest of us that

distributed solar power is already disrupting the century-old baseload business model
and you can’t put that off but for a few years.
Stop trying to
stick to just copper circuit switching
in a mobile smartphone Internet.

It’s time to get on with
wind off the Georgia coast
and

enough solar power to bring Georgia up from an F


to an A among solar states.
You can make Georgia a net exporter of power from sun and wind,

leading the southeast, the country, and the world.

You, sir, can make the sun rise on Georgia.

-jsq