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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: kcballer on December 09, 2009, 03:27:10 PM
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We have an opportunity to become the world leader in green technology but we are holding ourselves back and China will once again over lap us and we will become even less of a manufacturing country than we are now.
It's the quietest story in environmentalism. In less than a year, China went from a polluting megapower to an up-and-coming clean-tech contender that promises to outpace America. Both countries responded to the recession by authorizing big stimulus plans with significant green components: 34% of China's stimulus money was green, compared with just 12% of funds in the U.S. That's good for the world — as the low-cost-manufacturing champion, China might be able to churn out enough solar panels and wind turbines at a price the rest of us will happily pay. And the green stimulus is a sign that China, after staying mostly silent on global warming for years, realizes that its old model of pollute then clean up simply isn't sustainable. For the U.S., however, China's gains may mean losses at home. A recent report by the Breakthrough Institute warned that the U.S. could be lapped by Asia in the clean-tech race.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944307_1944333,00.html#ixzz0ZEl1O5Sj
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Watch this understand that you have adopted a new fundamentalist religion KC.
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Environmental technologies are the future. China knows it, why else is it sinking money at a massive level into it? For someone who adores China so much i'm a little surprised by your reaction.
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Environmental technologies are the future. China knows it, why else is it sinking money at a massive level into it? For someone who adores China so much i'm a little surprised by your reaction.
If its market based, adds value to the end user, and not requiring new taxes, new regulations and the customer wants it, great.
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Unfortunately things don't always work out that perfect.
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If its market based, adds value to the end user, and not requiring new taxes, new regulations and the customer wants it, great.
well for the most part new technologies will more than end up paying for themselves...I'm all for green technology provided most of the funding comes from the oil companies and not governments!
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Unfortunately things don't always work out that perfect.
Thats the problem, they have been talking about this since the 70's and have developed absolutley nothing that can replace oil in terms of cost and ease of use.
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well for the most part new technologies will more than end up paying for themselves...I'm all for green technology provided most of the funding comes from the oil companies and not governments!
Why would oil companies foot the bill? They would be cutting their own throats
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Why would oil companies foot the bill? They would be cutting their own throats
not true actually, lets be fair the oil aint gonna last forever, if they can hold a monopoly on a new technology and make money out of it they will. Theyre not going to go down without a plan B...at least not most of them!!
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not true actually, lets be fair the oil aint gonna last forever, if they can hold a monopoly on a new technology and make money out of it they will. Theyre not going to go down without a plan B...at least not most of them!!
Well that depends on if you buy into the whole peak oil thing
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not true actually, lets be fair the oil aint gonna last forever, if they can hold a monopoly on a new technology and make money out of it they will. Theyre not going to go down without a plan B...at least not most of them!!
True, and oil companies actually do plenty of research into alternative fuels and even battery technology. Oil companies see your point and have been branching out for quite some time. Funny thing, Chevron owns a ton of battery patents that expire in 2013 and guess who sold them those patents for a pittance?
Green tech is great...but the problems stem from the govt. central planning it, subsidizing losing tech (like ethanol) or otherwise giving into lobbying pressures and encouraging sectors and destroying others regardless of feasibility.
If the govt. wants to cut certain taxes, create and fund research and research centers like they are doing with the battery tech center in Michigan than you can count me in.
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Also, the govt. and pie in the sky people and lobbyists are trying to push "Green Tech" as some pixie dust stuff that will save us all. Put a ton of windmills here and subsidize some solar panels there and tell the auto companies to build cars that get 100mpg by 2015 and run on fairy dust and everything will be ok. This kind of talk is the bullshit propaganda and it needs to stop.
Getting us off oil will take exploring for our own fossil fuels and natural gas (an actual survey hasn't been done in 30 years), nuclear power, battery tech, build-outs for NatGas fueling stations, recharging stations better building materials and a very real change in the way we think and do things.
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The problem I have with the peak oil theory is that gas prices go way up and then low and behold they find some ginat oil reserve of the coast of Brazil or something.
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Watch this understand that you have adopted a new fundamentalist religion KC.
I'm wondering why China doesn't see environmentalism as an evil are you?
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I'm wondering why China doesn't see environmentalism as an evil are you?
Have you ever seen China? Half the country is a giant waste dump. And what exactly are you refering to? They aren't going to sign on to any agreement that is going to hamstring their economy. The Chines government will supress or crush anything that threatens said government.
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I'm wondering why China doesn't see environmentalism as an evil are you?
China is not engaging in fantasy land nonsense and economy killing garbage like Obama wants us to.
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Going green is fine.PURPOSELY destroying the economy while doing it is assanine.
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Going green is fine.PURPOSELY destroying the economy while doing it is assanine.
Exactly, if a technology can be developed to replace oil, great. But you don't say we are going to do it even if we don't have the technology\ability to do so. Just the fact that the government knows this and still pushes this shit is mind boggling
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I am actually surprised that this is a good debate with agreement on a lot of common things.
I guess where we differ is my view that without some government intervention we just end up kicking the tires on this thing and never make any progress.
As for GeorgeWhorewells supports of Michigan being an epicenter of this. I totally agree and actually Michael Moore wrote an interesting piece for the huffington post about what to do with the Michigan economy during this time of recession. It's worth a read and a novel idea.
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I am actually surprised that this is a good debate with agreement on a lot of common things.
I guess where we differ is my view that without some government intervention we just end up kicking the tires on this thing and never make any progress.
As for GeorgeWhorewells supports of Michigan being an epicenter of this. I totally agree and actually Michael Moore wrote an interesting piece for the huffington post about what to do with the Michigan economy during this time of recession. It's worth a read and a novel idea.
Here is the problem KC - the govt cant forever subsidize this stuff. at some point it has to stand or fail on its own in the marketplace.
If some guy comes to me with a "green product" and can add value, save me money, etc, I'm all for that.
However, if i am getting worse stuff for a higher price, that is also being subsidized with tax dollars, no thanks!
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Here is the problem KC - the govt cant forever subsidize this stuff. at some point it has to stand or fail on its own in the marketplace.
If some guy comes to me with a "green product" and can add value, save me money, etc, I'm all for that.
However, if i am getting worse stuff for a higher price, that is also being subsidized with tax dollars, no thanks!
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I am actually surprised that this is a good debate with agreement on a lot of common things.
I guess where we differ is my view that without some government intervention we just end up kicking the tires on this thing and never make any progress.
As for GeorgeWhorewells supports of Michigan being an epicenter of this. I totally agree and actually Michael Moore wrote an interesting piece for the huffington post about what to do with the Michigan economy during this time of recession. It's worth a read and a novel idea.
There is a reason why companies, especially tech and car companies, like to set up shop in Michigan with things concerning HQ's and R&D. There is a ton of unused capital in the state from people to places and such.
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Report: Mass. 'Clean Energy' Plant Closing After $58 Million in State Aid
CNS News ^ | 1/12/11 | Susan Jones
A clean energy company is closing its factory in Massachusetts, just two years after it opened the solar plant with about $58-million in taxpayer subsidies, the Boston Globe reported. Evergreen Solar calls itself a victim of weak demand and competition from cheaper suppliers in China.
The newspaper describes Evergreen Solar's closing a major hit to Democratic Governor Deval Patrick’s efforts to make Massachusetts a hub of the emerging clean-energy industry.
"The administration persuaded Evergreen to build at Devens with a package of grants, land, loans, and other aid originally valued at $76 million. The company ended up taking about $58 million, one of the largest aid packages Massachusetts has provided to a private company," the newspaper reported.
Gov. Patrick, a VIP at Evergreen's 2008 ribbon cutting, was heavily criticized by his rivals in 2010 for providing so much public aid to a company during tight fiscal times.
The Evergreen closing will eliminate 800 jobs in the commonwealth, the Globe reported.
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Green | News
http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2011/03/17/End-of-a-Green-Dream.aspx
The End of a Green Dream
A $5.7 billion plan to rebuild a California community college system with an emphasis on green technology falters.
•By Andrew Barbour
•03/17/11
It sounded too good to be true -- and it was. An ambitious plan to make Los Angeles Community College District a national leader in green technology and renewable energy appears to be in shambles after an investigative report by the Los Angeles Times has uncovered widespread mismanagement and waste. Larry Eisenberg, the executive director for facilities, planning, and development who oversaw the project, was fired by the LACCD board on March 9.
Editor's Note: The cover story of CT's April issue, “Lean Green Machines,” contains a profile of LACCD's green initiatives. The issue went to print before CT became aware of the LA Times report.
The district's green goals were part of a massive program to rebuild LA's nine-campus community college system. Funding totaling $5.7 billion was secured through a series of bond measures passed between 2001 and 2007. Accounting for interest, the final bill to taxpayers will likely surpass $11 billion.
According to a vision developed by Eisenberg, LACCD was to have become a model of clean energy, generating enough wind, solar, and geothermal energy to supply all its electricity needs -- and to sell its surplus.
In its six-part investigative series, however, the LA Times showed that both the vision and its implementation were seriously flawed, resulting in waste amounting to nearly $10 million. David Beaulieu, president of the District Academic Senate, also found fault with Eisenberg's plans for sustainable energy projects, calling them "wildly unrealistic" in a Senate newsletter.
Among the findings of the LA Times investigative report:
•Eisenberg estimated that it would cost $975 million to take all nine campuses off the grid. An engineering consultant believed the final bill would be much higher -- $1.9 billion. As a point of reference, LACCD spent less than $8 million on power bills in 2010.
•LACCD had insufficient space on its nine campuses even to house all the generating equipment that would be necessary to provide the district's energy via renewable sources.
•Three solar power arrays were scrapped once it became clear that the chosen locations sat on top of seismic faults.
•Plans to generate wind power on a large scale neglected the fact that average winds at most of the campuses are too light to generate much power.
•The district committed approximately $4 million to develop solar and wind energy projects that never made it beyond blueprints.
•At Southwest College, LACCD spent $1.2 million on a parking lot shaded by solar panels, but abandoned the project when it was only half completed.
According to the LA Times, other proposals from Eisenberg included:
•A $98 million investment in hydrogen fuel-cell equipment that has never been put into commercial operation
•A $59 million investment in untried hydrogen storage devices
•A $78 million investment in batteries, in expectation of stocking up on solar power during the day for use at night. With the technology currently available, such an approach is considered by most experts to be too costly to be viable.
•$78 million in geothermal and wind projects, despite the fact that geothermal systems are not effective in a temperate climate like that of Los Angeles
Given the high level of publicity that LACCD received for its green initiatives, there is a danger that these revelations will damage the credibility of other green projects on campuses nationwide. It is important to note that the problems besetting LACCD went far beyond the district's green initiatives. The LA Times articles exposed issues at every level of governance from the trustees down, and involved all types of construction ranging from a crooked clock tower to heating units installed upside down. Indeed, in April 2009, Eisenberg wrote an e-mail to his construction chief noting that, "Our new buildings are fundamentally flawed.... We cannot control lighting systems, HVAC systems, security systems, building management systems, etc."
About the Author
Andrew Barbour is executive editor of Campus Technology.
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Even U.N. Admits That Going Green Will Cost $76 Trillion
Fox News ^ | 7/6/11 | Dan Gainor
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Two years ago, U.N. researchers were claiming that it would cost “as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade” to go green. Now, a new U.N. report has more than tripled that number to $1.9 trillion per year for 40 years.
So let's do the math: That works out to a grand total of $76 trillion, over 40 years -- or more than five times the entire Gross Domestic Product of the United States ($14.66 trillion a year). It’s all part of a “technological overhaul” “on the scale of the first industrial revolution” called for in the annual report. Except that the U.N. will apparently control this next industrial revolution.
The new 251-page report with the benign sounding name of the “World Economic and Social Survey 2011” is rife with goodies calling for “a radically new economic strategy” and “global governance.”
Throw in possible national energy use caps and a massive redistribution of wealth and the survey is trying to remake the entire globe. The report has the imprimatur of the U.N., with the preface signed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon – all part of the “goal of full decarbonization of the global energy system by 2050.”
Make no mistake, much of this has nothing to do with climate.
The press release for the report discusses the need “to achieve a decent living standard for people in developing countries, especially the 1.4 billion still living in extreme poverty, and the additional 2 billion people expected worldwide by 2050.” That sounds more like global redistribution of wealth than worrying about the earth’s thermostat.
That’s because it is. The report goes on and says “one half of the required investments would have to be realized in developing countries.” In other words, $38 trillion would go to the developing world.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Even U.N. Admits That Going Green Will Cost $76 Trillion
Fox News ^ | 7/6/11 | Dan Gainor
________________________ ________________________ _________________
Two years ago, U.N. researchers were claiming that it would cost “as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade” to go green. Now, a new U.N. report has more than tripled that number to $1.9 trillion per year for 40 years.
So let's do the math: That works out to a grand total of $76 trillion, over 40 years -- or more than five times the entire Gross Domestic Product of the United States ($14.66 trillion a year). It’s all part of a “technological overhaul” “on the scale of the first industrial revolution” called for in the annual report. Except that the U.N. will apparently control this next industrial revolution.
The new 251-page report with the benign sounding name of the “World Economic and Social Survey 2011” is rife with goodies calling for “a radically new economic strategy” and “global governance.”
Throw in possible national energy use caps and a massive redistribution of wealth and the survey is trying to remake the entire globe. The report has the imprimatur of the U.N., with the preface signed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon – all part of the “goal of full decarbonization of the global energy system by 2050.”
Make no mistake, much of this has nothing to do with climate.
The press release for the report discusses the need “to achieve a decent living standard for people in developing countries, especially the 1.4 billion still living in extreme poverty, and the additional 2 billion people expected worldwide by 2050.” That sounds more like global redistribution of wealth than worrying about the earth’s thermostat.
That’s because it is. The report goes on and says “one half of the required investments would have to be realized in developing countries.” In other words, $38 trillion would go to the developing world.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Translation: "US, please foot the bill for the rest of the planet. Meanwhile, we'll continue to undermine you , rail against you and bash you at every gathering of the parasite leeches. Honestly, we're grateful for the countless billions you pour into this organization. REALLY."
Fuck the UN.
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Here the the two choices you have. Stay on a oil dependent GDP and watch as the recessions hit every 5-10 years when oil climbs to $150 a barrel and up.
Or spend money now to save money in the future. Stop the future recessions from occurring outright but moving away from oil production being the means to produce GDP.
Its rather simple. There is not enough low cost oil to sustain future growth at current prices. Either demand will have to drop, like it did in the recession when prices dipped, or the cost will have to go up. Like it did post recession when oil demand grew faster than ever.
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Here the the two choices you have. Stay on a oil dependent GDP and watch as the recessions hit every 5-10 years when oil climbs to $150 a barrel and up.
Or spend money now to save money in the future. Stop the future recessions from occurring outright but moving away from oil production being the means to produce GDP.
Its rather simple. There is not enough low cost oil to sustain future growth at current prices. Either demand will have to drop, like it did in the recession when prices dipped, or the cost will have to go up. Like it did post recession when oil demand grew faster than ever.
This nation, as well as the world, tosses a shit ton of cash, subsidies, tax exemptions, tax dollars etc at "green tech" whether it's windmills, solar, ethanol etc and we have little to show for it. And by no means am I saying that we shouldn't invest, but that we are obviously going about this in the totally wrongest and dumbest and most corrupt of ways. It does no good to put up massive, tax payer fucking wind-farms in the great plains states and it really makes no sense to put wind-farms anywhere that will involve long distance transmission but it happens. Ethanol is another example of hucksterism and waste, fraud and corruption.
We need to spend money, lots of it and in a better and smarter way. Our current "policy" has wasted so much, propped up unsustainable entities and distorted the market place while at the same time crowding out smaller companies as the large Agro's, G.E., Oil, Ethanol refiners get all of the tax subsidies and political favors.
Production, conservation, diversification, decentralization. There you go.
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Feeding The Masses On Unicorn Ribs
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
Besides healing the planet and returning the rising seas to their natural beds, then-Senator Obama promised that his administration would create beautiful green jobs: well paid, stable, abundant jobs, unionized, with full benefits and making the earth healthier and the American people richer. As President, he stayed on message: even after the truther-enabling “green jobs czar” Van Jones left the administration, green jobs have been one of the President’s signature policies for putting the American people back to work.
Obama promised to create 5 million green jobs within ten years. Investors’ Business Daily has a list of that plan’s successes so far.
- On his recent jobs tour Obama stopped at a Johnson Controls plant in southern Michigan, which received $300 million in green grants and plans to create a whopping total of 150 jobs, at a cost of $2 million per position.
- Evergreen Solar Inc., which received unknown amounts of green stimulus funds on the hope that it would create “between 90 and 100 jobs” two years ago, filed for bankruptcy this week, $485.6 million in debt. Their Massachusetts plant once employed 800 people; in March it was replaced with a factory in Wuhan, China.
- Green Vehicles, an electric car “maker” in Salinas, California, took $500,000 from the city and almost $200,000 from the state but has failed to produce even one car.
- And as reported earlier on this site, Seattle was one of a handful of cities that received $20 million in federal grants as part of Retrofit Ramp-Up, a program designed to refit houses with more energy efficient materials. Unfortunately, as KOMO4 of Seattle reports, after more than a year “only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.”
I’ve posted about this failing strategy before; it’s nice to see (h/t Instapundit) that the New York Times has also figured it out that the administration’s green jobs initiative is an embarrassing mess.
As the paper of record reports,
Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter…
The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.
The belief that green jobs would drive a new era of American prosperity was — like the large majority of green policy chat — intellectually incoherent. The goods that drive renewable energy industries, like so much else in this world, are far cheaper to construct in Asia. As the NYT piece describes, SolFocus, a widely-celebrated solar power company based, only has 90 employees at their San Jose headquarters. The solar panels are assembled in China. Whether a product is an ordinary t-shirt or an admirable piece of world saving green technology like a wind turbine has zilch, zero, nada influence on the mind of the manufacturer trying to decide where it should be made.
There are perhaps some green jobs that would be exceptions; we could eliminate all forms of welfare and food stamps and offer the unemployed minimum wage jobs pedaling stationary bicycles hooked up to electric generators, solving our budget, poverty, obesity and energy independence problems all at once — but these are not the jobs either the President or his supporters have in mind.
It’s understandable and even forgivable that a political candidate would talk about green jobs on the hustings, especially when the Democratic Party is divided between job hungry blue collar workers and fastidious greens who break out in hives in the presence of coal. What worries me isn’t that the President’s team advised him to make a few speeches on this subject; if a candidate can’t throw chum to the base now and then what’s the point of having elections? What worries me is that they didn’t understand that making something this bogus a central plank of his actual governing plan on an issue as vital as jobs would have serious costs down the road.
Many liberals want green jobs to exist so badly that they don’t fully grasp how otherworldly and ineffectual this advocacy makes the President look to unemployed meat packers and truck drivers.
Let me put it this way. A GOP candidate might feel a need to please creationist voters and say a few nice things about intelligent design. That is politics as usual; it gins up the base and drive the opposition insane with fury and rage. No harm, really, and no foul.
But if that same politician then proposed to base federal health policy on a hunt for the historical Garden of Eden so that we could replace Medicare by feeding old people on fruit from the Tree of Life, he would have gone from quackery-as-usual to raving incompetence. True, the Tree of Life approach polls well in GOP focus groups: no cuts to Medicare benefits, massive tax savings, no death panels, Biblical values on display. Its only flaw is that there won’t be any magic free fruit that lets us live forever, and sooner or later people will notice that and be unhappy.
Cranach: The Garden of Eden (Wikimedia)
Green jobs are the Democratic equivalent of Tree of Life Medicare; they scratch every itch of every important segment of the base and if they actually existed they would be an excellent policy choice. But since they are no more available to solve our jobs problem than the Tree of Life stands ready to make health care affordable, a green jobs policy boils down to a promise to feed the masses on tasty unicorn ribs from the Great Invisible Unicorn Herd that only the greens can see.
Here in particular Senator Obama as he then was would have benefited from a less gushing, more skeptical press. If his first couple of speeches on this topic had been met with the incredulous and even mocking response they deserved, he probably would not have married himself so publicly to so vain and so empty a cause.
The cost is not simply the stimulus funds wasted on “investments” that don’t produce any jobs. It’s not just the opportunity cost as more practical and reasonable job creation agendas were shoved aside to make room for the unicorn hunt. It’s the credibility cost. The President cannot successfully make the case for stimulus so many of his supporters would like him to make when the opposition can cite figures like $2 million a job, or point to jobs shipped overseas and companies shut down. Worse, the failed unicorn barbecue undermines the President’s ability to convince the American people that he knows how to create jobs. Thirty months of poor job numbers while the White House was off chasing unicorns and hyping green jobs as a national strategy means that the administration has forfeited public confidence on the jobs issue. That is no small handicap in times like the present.
The green jobs fiasco is not the only failure sapping the President’s credibility as an economic policy maker.
The administration was clearly caught off guard by the weakness in the economy this year, and only belatedly discovered how poorly constructed its stimulus really was. Not even administration spokespersons attempt to defend its housing policy when it comes to topics like mortgage relief.
A quick return to economic growth would put all these concerns in the background, but on the more probable assumption that the economy will still be struggling well into if not all the way through 2012, the White House needs to figure out how to change course — and how to communicate that change of course to a country that has come dangerously close to tuning out the President when he talks about jobs.
Posted in Economics, Environment, Essays
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http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/08/19/feeding-the-masses-on-unicorn-ribs
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I am all for green energy, better cleaner forms of energy and I am all for phasing out crappy forms of energy.
BUT, not the way it's being done in most cases.
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Solyndra has been a massive Obama regime success!
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I am all for green energy, better cleaner forms of energy and I am all for phasing out crappy forms of energy.
BUT, not the way it's being done in most cases.
It's not viable, economical, sustainable, or realistic without trillions of taxpayer dollars.
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It's not viable, economical, sustainable, or realistic without trillions of taxpayer dollars.
In most cases. But not with nuclear energy
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LOL @ 76 trillion.
That number doesn't even seem real. Really.
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In most cases. But not with nuclear energy
true, but the enviro cult is against that too. Where I live they are trying to shut down a nuke plant that provides 25 percent of power wo any alternative.
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SpoTted owl. >:(
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We have an opportunity to become the world leader in green technology but we are holding ourselves back and China will once again over lap us and we will become even less of a manufacturing country than we are now.
It's the quietest story in environmentalism. In less than a year, China went from a polluting megapower to an up-and-coming clean-tech contender that promises to outpace America. Both countries responded to the recession by authorizing big stimulus plans with significant green components: 34% of China's stimulus money was green, compared with just 12% of funds in the U.S. That's good for the world — as the low-cost-manufacturing champion, China might be able to churn out enough solar panels and wind turbines at a price the rest of us will happily pay. And the green stimulus is a sign that China, after staying mostly silent on global warming for years, realizes that its old model of pollute then clean up simply isn't sustainable. For the U.S., however, China's gains may mean losses at home. A recent report by the Breakthrough Institute warned that the U.S. could be lapped by Asia in the clean-tech race.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944307_1944333,00.html#ixzz0ZEl1O5Sj
Definitely the model for Green, give me a fucking break:
(http://js.top-10-list.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Beijing-China-Polution.jpg)
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We have an opportunity to become the world leader in green technology but we are holding ourselves back and China will once again over lap us and we will become even less of a manufacturing country than we are now.
It's the quietest story in environmentalism. In less than a year, China went from a polluting megapower to an up-and-coming clean-tech contender that promises to outpace America. Both countries responded to the recession by authorizing big stimulus plans with significant green components: 34% of China's stimulus money was green, compared with just 12% of funds in the U.S. That's good for the world — as the low-cost-manufacturing champion, China might be able to churn out enough solar panels and wind turbines at a price the rest of us will happily pay. And the green stimulus is a sign that China, after staying mostly silent on global warming for years, realizes that its old model of pollute then clean up simply isn't sustainable. For the U.S., however, China's gains may mean losses at home. A recent report by the Breakthrough Institute warned that the U.S. could be lapped by Asia in the clean-tech race.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944307_1944333,00.html#ixzz0ZEl1O5Sj
But I thought you supported green technology so we can keep on bombing brown people? ???
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latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-green-20110823,0,4353091.column
latimes.com
Op-Ed
Goldberg: America's 'green' quagmire
The 'greening' of the country, including the creation of green jobs, has proved unworkable and expensive.
Jonah Goldberg
August 23, 2011
It was a massive flatbed truck, flanked by smaller vehicles brandishing "oversized load" banners, carrying a huge white thing.
I think the first one I saw was in Ohio. But I know that by the time I passed Grand Island, Neb., I'd lost count.
What was it? At first, it looked like it could be a replacement for the Swords of Qādisīyah — that giant crossed blades sculpture in central Baghdad.
And then, the aha: It was a propeller blade for a wind turbine, a really big one.
I've seen plenty of wind farms, but I'd never seen the blades being transported for construction. Last week I saw a lot of them.
Why? Because they were on the road, and so was I. My 8-year-old daughter and I were on a summer adventure. We drove more than 2,000 miles from Washington, D.C. to, eventually, Steamboat Springs, Colo. (Don't worry, I did most of the highway driving.)
Something about seeing all those turbine propellers made me think of wartime mobilization, like FDR's ramp-up during the Lend-Lease period or Josef Stalin's decision to send Soviet heavy industry east of the Urals.
The comparison isn't completely daft, either. The notion that we should move to a war footing on energy has been a reigning cliche of U.S. politics ever since Jimmy Carter's Oval Office energy crisis address in 1977. "This difficult effort will be the 'moral equivalent of war' — except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy."
Ever since, we've been hearing that green must become the new red, white and blue.
It's difficult to catalog all of the problems with this nonsense. For starters, the mission keeps changing. Is the green energy revolution about energy independence? Or is it about fighting global warming? Or is it about jobs?
For most of the last few years the White House and its supporters have been saying it's about all three. But that's never been true. If we want energy independence (and I'm not sure why we would) or if we want to reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil (a marginally better proposition, given that Canada and often Mexico supply the U.S. with more oil than Saudi Arabia), we would massively expand our domestic drilling for oil and gas and our use of coal or carbon-free nuclear. That would also create lots of jobs that can't be exported (you can't drill for American oil in China, but we can, and do, buy lots of Chinese-made solar panels).
As for the windfall in green jobs, that has always been a con job.
For instance, Barack Obama came into office insisting that Spain was beating the U.S. in the rush for green jobs. Never mind that in Spain — where unemployment is now at 21% — the green jobs boom has been a bust. One major 2009 study by researchers at King Juan Carlos University found that the country destroyed 2.2 jobs in other industries for every green job it created, and the Spanish government has spent more than half a million euros for each green job created since 2000. Wind industry jobs cost a cool $1 million euros apiece.
The record in America has been no better, Obama's campaign stump speeches notwithstanding. The New York Times, which has been touting the green agenda in its news pages for years, admitted last week that "federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show." Even Obama's former green jobs czar concedes the point, as do other leading Democrats, including Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles.
Perhaps the most pathetic part of the war to green America is how unwarlike it really is. The New York Times also reported that California's "weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry," a direct sop to labor unions. And afterward, the inflated costs made the program too expensive for homeowners.
Green jobs, like shovel-ready jobs, proved a myth in no small part because Obama is eager to talk as if this green stuff was the moral equivalent of war, but he's not willing or able to do things a real war requires.
What we're left with is not the moral equivalent of war but the moral equivalent of a quagmire. A very expensive quagmire.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
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Wind energy is pretty pointless as, at this point, energy from it can't be stored and it needs constant back-up from fossil fuel sources. It makes more sense as a tool of power decentralization, but that won't ever be pushed. Solar panels are only around 18-20% efficient and far too expensive to survive without massive govt. subsidies. Biofuels are not the solution because they either harm an engine (B20/ethanol), result in far lower mileage (ethanol) and require massive govt. subsidies(ethanol). Brazil uses sugar cane to create ethanol which is superior to corn based production but the U.S. can't import any sugar cane because it has tariffs on imported cane to protect U.S. Ag. industry (Read: CORN).
Retarded yet? Absolutely.
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Sierra Club’s War on Coal Blamed for 53k Lost Jobs in Michigan
Capitol Confidential ^ | 9/11/2011 | Tom Gantert
The state of Michigan has lost 53,587 jobs — 8th highest in the country — due to the Sierra Club’s campaign to shut down coal factories, according to a report released by the National Mining Association.
The analysis claims the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, in which the environmental group files a lawsuit against every coal plant in America seeking a permit, has cost the country 116,872 permanent jobs and 1.12 million construction jobs. Michigan’s job-loss figure includes both permanent and construction jobs.
“From this analysis, only two conclusions are possible: Either the Sierra Club is exaggerating its effectiveness, or its effectiveness is genuine but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs for Americans struggling to find work in the middle of an historic employment crisis,” said NMA President and CEO Hal Quinn.
(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfident ial.com ...
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'Green' Debacle: Tens of Thousands of Abandoned Wind Turbines Now Litter America's Landscape
Natural News ^ | November 24th, 2011 | Jonathan Benson, staff writer Naturral News
Posted on Thursday, November 24, 2011 1:21:06 PM by LRoggy
(NaturalNews) Literal beacons of the "green" energy movement, giant wind turbines have been one of the renewable energy sources of choice for the US government, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their construction and use across the country. But high maintenance costs, high rates of failure, and fluctuating weather conditions that affect energy production render wind turbines expensive and inefficient, which is why more than 14,000 of them have since been abandoned.
Before government subsidies for the giant metals were cut or eliminated in many areas, wind farms were an energy boom business. But in the post-tax subsidy era, the costs of maintaining and operating wind turbines far outweighs the minimal power they generate in many areas, which has left a patchwork of wind turbine graveyards in many of the most popular wind farming areas of the US.
"Thousands of abandoned wind turbines littered the landscape of wind energy's California 'big three' locations which include Altamont Pass, Tehachapin and San Gorgonio, considered among the world's best wind sites," writes Andrew Walden of the American Thinker. "In the best wind spots on earth, over 14,000 turbines were simply abandoned. Spinning, post-industrial junk which generates nothing but bird kills."
Walden speaks, of course, about the birds, bats, and other air creatures that routinely get tangled in and killed by wind turbine propellers. And as far as the "post-industrial junk" language, well, if it costs too much to run the machines in the first place, then it definitely costs too much to uproot and remove them post-construction.
This whole wind energy mess just further illustrates how the American people have been played by their elected officials who bought into the "global warming" hysteria that spawned the push for wind energy in the first place. And now that the renewable energy tax subsidies are gradually coming to an end in some places, the true financial and economic viability, or lack of wind energy, is on display for the world to see.
"It is all about the tax subsidies," writes Don Surber of the Charleston Daily Mail. "The blades churn until the money runs out. If an honest history is written about the turn of the 21st century, it will include a large, harsh chapter on how fears about global warming were overplayed for profit by corporations."
Sources for this article include:
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurbe...
http://toryaardvark.com/2011/11/17/...
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/034234_wind_turbines_abandoned.html#ixzz1eeDXyzva
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A few things to think about:
1) We have plenty of oil, natural gas, and coal in the United States and in allied countries.
2) Investment in new technologies for new forms of energy are best handled by the free market. Politicians and bureaucrats will direct government investment in ways to benefit themselves. For example, a Congressman might only support a certain form of investment if it benefits his district or if he gets some kind of kickback for supporting the bill (e.g. appropriations in some other bill). This encourages government not to invest in the most efficient form of research or the most likely form of new technology, but in whatever is most politically beneficial... that's a big reason why corn ethanol is so heavily subsidized in the US. On the other hand, private investors investing with their own money have an incentive to find the technology/research most likely to bring about the greatest profit. Thus, private investment trumps government investment. And you might say "why not have both?" Well, the answer is that there is a very limited supply of scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs when it comes to advanced technology like what might become the new form of green energy. Every government dollar that goes toward "investment" in this field strong-arms a private dollar out of this field. So it's best to leave this to the free market.