The Dark Side of Green - Gaming the global-warming fight.

Gill · 10-26-09, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. Witness the 1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emission permits by 2012). Government has often had a hand in jump--starting a new -industry—both the computer chip and the Internet got their start in American defense research. But it's hard to think of any non-military industry that has been so completely and utterly driven by regulation and subsidies from the start.

It's a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve. Thanks to effective lobbying by American and European farmers, the more cost--efficient and environmentally effective Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is locked out of U.S. and EU markets. Even within Europe, most countries have their own "technical standard" for biofuels to better keep out competing products—even if they are cheaper or produce a greater cut in emissions. Because the subsidies are tied to feedstocks, there is zero incentive to develop better technology.

Green Subsidies Aren't Working | Newsweek Environment | Newsweek.com

And this only discusses subsidies to businesses and I thought liberals were against business subsidies. Oh yeah, I forgot, they hate business subsidies except when it's for their flavor of the month cause.

It doesn't touch the billions of dollars spent by the U.S. government on climate research.

And people actually wonder why so many "scientists" are on the global warming bandwagon. They are because there's a chest of gold there and they all want their share.

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