Liberals Save Electricity; SD Needs Greens to Counter Keystone XL Power Demands

The Keystone XL pipeline will drain South Dakota's electricity supply. What can we do to compensate for all the electricity those oil pumping stations will use to prevent our utilities from having to raise our rates to build more coal-fired power plants?

One simple solution is for South Dakota to import more Democrats, who use less electricity:

Two UCLA economists report that, in the area served by an unnamed utility in the Western United States, households headed by registered Democrats use less electricity than those headed by registered Republicans. This holds true after factoring in variables such as climate, the price of electricity, and the size and age of the homes in question.

The difference in kilowatt hours suggests that left-leaning voters are less likely to respond to uncomfortable heat by reaching for thermostat. “Liberal households engage in voluntary restraint, largely by lowering air-conditioning in the summer relative to conservatives,” Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn write in the journal Economics Letters [Tom Jacobs, "Liberal Homeowners Use Less Electricity," Pacific Standard, 2013.03.07].

We liberals are known for our restraint, not to mention our ability to take the heat.

The Greens keep their electric bills even lower:

“Relative to Republican registered households, Democrats consume 5.1 percent less electricity, and Green party registered voters consume 15.1 percent less,” they report. “This differential grows larger in the hotter summer months.

“We estimate that during the summer, Democrats consume 6.6 percent less electricity than observationally identical Republicans, while Green Party households consume 19.1 percent less electricity than Republican households. This larger summer differential is likely to be related to air-conditioning demand [Jacobs 2013.03.07].

So here's the plan: When President Obama approves Keystone XL and South Dakota and protestors flock to West River to slow down construction of this unnecessary environmental risk, we send out our Chamber of Commerce reps to encourage them to stick around after the pipeline is done. The liberal protestors stick around, make themselves at home in nice energy-efficient yurts...

...of course, the problem with this plan is that it doesn't reduce our electrical demand unless the liberal influx scares an equal number of conservatives out of the state. And we don't want anyone feeling unwelcome. It looks like we'll have to focus on stopping Keystone XL to save our electricity.