I spent the evening speaking to Gao Jie, a Beijing civil judge who left the bench to join China's growing environmental movement when her kids came home from school one day coughing and wheezing. You only have to inhale in the capitol city these days to understand that they have a huge problem there.

One of the dirty little secrets of international trade for the last three decades has been the offshoring of high polluting industries from the US and Europe to China, which then vociferously complain about the emerging country's toxic environment. Much of the Middle Kingdom's record carbon emissions these days have been imported from the West. 'Cancer villages' are now proliferating throughout the landscape.

China gets 80% of its power from coal, compared to only 50% in the US. As a result, scientists figure that China became the world's largest emitter of CO2 in 2006. The central government is now asking the provinces to achieve both GDP and energy conservation goals at the same time, a difficult task at best. Government policy dictates that air conditioners only kick in at 79 degrees. If you think that went down well, try spending a summer in Beijing sometime.

It is also pushing headlong into alternative energy, is already the technological leader in key areas like wind, and has an eye to exporting low cost platforms to the US. It is no accident that two of the most competitive solar companies in the world, Suntech (STP) and Yingli Green Energy Holding (YGE), are Chinese. China is also having Phoenix based First Solar (FSLR) build the world's largest thin film solar power plant in Western China, which, it turns out, looks a lot like Arizona. The mammoth, 25 square mile facility will supply power to three million homes.

China's problems give one an inkling of how we might have ended up if we hadn't passed the Environmental Protection Act. I first visited China during the Cultural Revolution, when they doused piles of bodies of those who died in the famine with kerosene and burned them, and anyone educated had to endure being paraded down a street in a dunce cap. I had to pinch myself after seeing a sophisticated and well-educated woman like Gao Jie openly pursue her liberal goals, unfettered by a totalitarian regime.

 

I just contracted to buy all the gasoline I want at 14 cents a gallon. No, I have not struck oil in my backyard, or come into an inheritance from a long lost Kuwaiti relative. That is the de facto price that PG&E is billing me for a full charge on my all-electric Nissan Leaf.

That works out to $1.20 to recharge a vehicle that will transport me 80 miles, at the price of five cents a kilowatt hour. This is a tiny fraction of? the 40 cents/hour I pay to run the rest of my appliances, and a pittance compared to the 50 cent/hour peak rate I pay to run the air conditioner in the summer.

PG&E has exactly one engineer to talk to its 10 million customers about this ground breaking new technology, and after much effort, I managed to get him on the phone. I asked who was paying the subsidy? Were those profligate spendthrifts in Washington involved? He answered that there was no subsidy, that power sold at night was cheap because there was no other market.

So I inquired as to who was paying for all of the equipment upgrades, like the new transformers and power lines that were needed? Do I sense the heavy hand of Sacramento? He replied that there was no capital cost because the same infrastructure that delivered power to me during the day would be used to power my car at night. Only a couple of bucks would be spent on the installation of a new 'time of use smart meter'.

The car cars with a $7,500 clean energy tax credit. I know we're supposed to be cutting the deficit by eliminating handouts like this. But you'll only take my subsidies away by prying my cold dead hands away off of them. Take someone else's subsidies, not mine! It is the American thing to do these days.

He did mention that one unanticipated problem had arisen. My ears perked up. Many wealthy Tesla Roadster owners in Los Altos Hills were impressing so many girlfriends with rides that they were requiring multiple daytime recharges, even though they promised to recharge only at night. Not only did this send their electricity bills through the roof, it was causing problems with the grid as well. I guess it?s all part of the teething process, a cost of making the great leap forward to the next generation. Who knew that Match.com would be involved?

I never thought I'd get something for nothing, but it looks like this time I will. That is, as long as the car works, and my kids don't run the battery down playing rap music all night.