This is a surprise from Newsweek. Some recent examples of green subsidy: Fisker Automotive will receive a $529 million subsidy from the US government to build hybrid cars for the US market in California. This follows a previous subsidy award of $465 million to Tesla Motors to build electric cars. Both awards were made on the recommendation of former vice-president Al Gore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an electric car fan, I drive one myself. But such projects should succeed or fail on their own merit and without public funds in my opinion.
By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK
Published Oct 24, 2009
Excerpts from the magazine issue dated Nov 2, 2009
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.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have asked Germany to end its ludicrous solar subsidies that will total $115.5 billion by 2013.
Read the article The Dark Side of Green at newsweek.com
Josh
I don’t know if you knew this or not but one of Henry Ford’s earlier cars ran on methanol made from hemp.
Windmill is the perfect name for an idiotic technology.
Kudzu; you forgot Kudzu (WHICH I think probably outgrows h emp) –
– except for … uh … ‘medicinal’ (or … wait-for-it … TAX) purposes …
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Where is Algore when you need him?
No “clean energy” bill signing for China.
Who remembers the post-war Messerschmitt? A three-wheel car that appeared to be a tandem-seat aircraft cockpit on wheels.
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Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China
http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
“At the junction of Ningxia province and Inner Mongolia province, I saw a tall chimney puffing out golden smoke covering the blue sky, large tracts of the grassland have become industrial waste dumps; unbearable foul smell made people want to cough; Surging industrial sewage flowed into the Yellow River…”
– Lu Guang
Coincidentally, someone sent me a photo today of a Smartcar crushed between two trucks – it´s now about two feet long – not sure what happened to the person inside, but there is an ambulance in the pic. as well, so it´s anyone´s guess.
How, do I go about getting the pic. to you?
Simon says..
anyone remember the Cat in the Hat?
Corporations and businesses are driven by economic realism. They understand that, if they take their capital and profits and invest them in R&D,design, or new equipment and make all the right choices, they can expect to earn perhaps 10% on their money, maybe 25% briefly, if they come up with the hot next new thing. If, however, they invest $10,000, $100,000, or maybe a million or two in the political class, they can reap grants, subsidies, and contracts worth millions, hundreds of millions, or billions with little of the nasty uncertainty that accompanies regular investment. In the modern world it’s a no-brainer decision.
The only really effective way to limit government corruption is to strictly limit it’s power and scope of control. The former Soviet Union is the crowning example. Since the State controlled everything corruption was endemic and pervasive. The smallest petty bureaucratic action couldn’t be accomplished without a bribe changing hands. The wise old white guys who were our Founding Fathers realized this and, guided by the work of Montesquieu and philosophers back to Plato and Aristotle, strove mightily to craft within our Constitution a governmental structure whose primary purpose was to protect the People from the Government. But even they realized it would take profound dedication and diligence on the part of the People to maintain what they provided.
Unfortunately, that dedication and diligence has only been evinced quite sporadically, while the tyrannical impulse it was meant to guard against has been relentless. From Lincoln, to Teddy Roosevelt, to Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush, and now the One, government power has grown inexorably, while Liberty and Freedom have been slivered away like a pumpkin pie on a Thanksgiving sideboard, until we find ourselves in the present moment, perched on the precipice like flock of lemmings, staring into the abyss of a future ruled by a global government composed of self righteous nannystate bureaucrats.
If the present trends are any indication, that world will be so tightly controlled that we will have to raise our hands like first-graders for permission to go to the toilet and it would be ironic justice if the single sheet of TP we are granted to complete our business was made from recycled copies of our Constitution, that most precious gift those dead old white guys gave to all of humanity, so that we can do literally, what we have been doing to it figuratively all these years.
As I’ve watched the events of recent years unfold, I’m often filled with an overwhelming sense of shame since I can honestly say I saw this coming more than 40 years ago and while I’ve often taken the occasion to rise and rail against the looming tide, I’ve never had the courage to fight it with anything like the full commitment that it merited. I fear our legacy in the future will be to be an epithet on the lips of all those who will be forced to inhabit the world we are about to bequeath them. Not because of anything that occurs with the climate, but because we were willing to surrender human freedom to convenience, indifference, and acceptance of the manipulations of tyrannical hucksters. Our ignominy will be richly deserved.
@JamesG didn’t Obama run on hemp too for a while?
Dr. Bob Carter discusses the IPCC’s science of deceit.
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The science of deceit
by Bob Carter
October 26, 2009
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/10/alarmism-contra-science
Science is about simplicity
A well-accepted aphorism about science, in the context of difference of opinion between two points of view, is “Madam, you are entitled to your own interpretation, but not to your own facts”.
The world stoker of the fires of global warming alarmism, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cleverly suborns this dictum in two ways.
First, the IPCC accepts advice from influential groups of scientists who treat the data that underpins their published climate interpretations (collected, of course, using public research funds) as their own private property, and refuse to release it to other scientists.
Hotrod said
“If all direct and indirect subsidies to oil …”
I would ask what subsidies in particular are being referred to?
I only ask because it is a standard argument in the discussion as to why other energy sources cannot compete, so I am wondering what these subsides are.
hotrod,
ARB’s website for bio-ethanol is shown below. Scroll down to see the Staff Report and Appendices.
And yes, they do give credit to corn refineries for DDGS and energy exports, but refuse to do the same for co-products from oil refineries. Oil refineries produce and sell approximately 15 percent of the products into non-fuel uses, such as asphalt, lubricants, and petrochemical feedstocks. Ethanol from corn looks even worse if proper accounting is done.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm
I also wrote on ARB’s analysis here:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/ab-32-and-low-carbon-fuel-standard.html
Robert M. (10:15:45) :
Why is only the US blamed? I say let them eat their oil.
That should be a tasty main dish after an entree of depleted uranium and phosphorus.
I refer to Kate’s contribution and the article she cited.
An extract .. “Green taxes already make up 7 per cent of the Government’s tax take.”
Imagine how popular a political party would be if they stated that they would REDUCE each person’s tax burden by 7% without any detriment to existing services whatsoever!
Dave Wendt (14:45:29) :
Cracking post sir!
JamesG (13:55:31) :
Josh
I don’t know if you knew this or not but one of Henry Ford’s earlier cars ran on methanol made from hemp.
And Herr Diesel was all for running french military submarines on palm kernel oil until he was found floating face down in the English Channnel…
What’s truly amazing is that the US Dept of Energy rejected a debt guarantee for USU, the only US owned processor of nuclear fuel. The centrifuge they are building would enrich nuclear fuel using approx 80% less energy than the current technology. It’s baffling!
USU has major long term contracts with domestic utilities to deliver nuclear fuel but if they don’t finish the new facility they will not be able to compete.
USU is not asking for a grant, but a guarantee of debt used to finish this project. Assuming it goes well, there would be now cost to tax payers. Without the guarantee there is virtually no way they will be able to issue the debt in the current market to finish the project.
Energy independence??? Not from the people who are irrationally against nuclear.
JamesG (13:55:31) :
Josh
I don’t know if you knew this or not but one of Henry Ford’s earlier cars ran on methanol made from hemp.
I did know Ford used hemp-derived fuel for his early cars. As I understand, the petroleum industry lobbied intensely and ran a smear campaign against biofuels in the early 20th Century. Amazing how history changed due to petroleum becoming the dominant fuel.
ShrNfr, Obama has always run strictly on B.S.
Dave Wendt (14:45:29) :
SPOT ON (sadly). Excellent post!
hotrod (11:53:57) :
Dan Lee (09:49:08) :
The US & EU need to re-think their Brazil strategy. Bring in their ethanol along with the flex-fuel autos they’re making, and we’ll dramatically reduce our dependency on the middle-east almost overnight.
That would also free up the 1/3 of US crop production that goes to our own ethanol, and put it back to being used for food.
The corn used for ethanol production is not sweet corn used for human food consumption, it is field corn which is grown as an industrial commodity.
And the Dept. of Ag, says the US produced fully 50% of the world’s corn supply. Yet only 13% of that is used for human consumption as in corn chips, flour, breads etc. The vast majority of corn crops go to grow beef and other livestock.
Which suggests, if you want more corn chips – maybe cut down on the Fat Burgers. Or not.
I’d be highly; I say HIGHLY surprised if either of you two (because at this point I’m not sure who posted what) could provide ANY supporting primary evidence or documentation on this …
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Well, there ya go; we need a cite. (A link to an article or that ‘study’ as it were …)
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According to this quote from the Climate Chief, we have to give up Steaks now, to save the world… This green movement is going to run smack into BBQ crowd, and get eaten if you ask me… here is the quote.
“…People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming.
In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”
Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas….”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece
_Jim (10:57:33) :
Government has often had a hand in jump–starting a new -industry—both the computer chip and …
I would remind our writer at Newsweak that TI holds the patent for the microcircuit and an early calculator (arguably a computer of sorts) and it was _not_ the product of a government ‘jump start’ grant.
In fact, since TI was a spin-off of SSC, Seismograph Services Corp., perhaps the oil industry jump-started the microchip. Maybe profits generated in one industry jump start others!
Just a thought….
Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece