Here’s a NYTimes Thomas Friedman op-ed from a few days ago. Some interesting tidbits in there, such as:
Sure, solar and wind are cheaper than coal. And Exxon has stifled an invention that lets cars run on WATER. I heard it from my friend.
It’s laughable. If solar is so cheap why dose it need to be subsidized? Why is any of this necessary? Wind is subsized also and show me please the company that makes wind for .1c per kwh. The cost of wind is in the machines, so they’re going to make the machines for 1/50th of the price a few years ago? I don’t think that’s believeable.
Germany and Spain have a lot of renewables because they subsidize the hell out of them. Without that, they don’t exist except in niche applications.
Coal and nuclear are also ‘baseload’ power, ie on 24-7. Wind and solar aren’t. You would need back up generation if wind ever became a large % of the grid as it is not constant.
Maybe all this ‘investment’ will result in a breakthrough…or maybe not. What about synfuels, whereby the Carter administration spent billions ‘refining’ oil from oil shale. Not a barrel produced. Or how about ethanol, replacing gasoline at a huge cost - it wouldn’t exist without subsidies. Not every gov’t investment program results in the internet.
And it’s not like there already hasn’t been a huge amount of research in these areas. It’s been going on for decades. Solar cells were going to save us in the 1970s, 30 years ago, and there’s been a ton of improvement since then. Yet they aren’t even CLOSE to coal or natural gas in cost.
How does a gov’t ‘invest’ huge amounts in basically research projects anyway? Is research that scalable? Are there that many scientists with research projects?
I understand what a ‘green job’ is, if it is narrowly defined as a job involving alternative energy, improving energy efficiency, recycling, or whatnot.
What I didn’t understand is what the left considered a ‘green job’, since they’ve been making claims that it was going to usher in a whole new economy that would actually solve the problems of loss of manufacturing jobs, improve GDP, and save the planet all in the bargain. I wanted to know what the actual plan was for these green jobs, since so much is being promised through the creation of the ‘new green economy’.
Well, after much reading of various source material, including all the reports from the Apollo Alliance and Van Jones’ web site, I know what ‘green jobs’ are now. They’re workfare. They will not create a new economy, they will not improve GDP. The plan is to create armies of ‘green collar workers’ who will be paid much more than minimum wage, and who will be paid with borrowed government money (to the tune of $150 billion per year). They will then go around and do such ‘green jobs’ as adding weatherstripping to poor people’s homes and installing solar panels and windmills. The entire program is described as a program to distribute wealth from the rich to the poor. What a surprise.
There are no reasonable numbers - no hard information. I kept hearing Van Jones described as an ‘expert’ on green jobs, and that confused me because he has no technical, scientific, engineering, or management experience. He’s just another community organizer with a grudge. His vaunted book on the ‘green collar economy’ is just another tiresome rant against Katrina, the Iraq war, yada yada.
I had assumed that since these guys were at the stage of actually getting money to implement some grand new ‘green economy’, there might actually be things like pilot studies, cost-benefit analyses, energy savings projections, etc. You know, the kind of things a real project manager might produce. But there’s nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The new ‘green economy’ of the future assumes that if the government just spends enough money, somehow new technologies will be invented that will cause the world to beat a path to America’s door to learn how to green the world. This is nothing more than wishful thinking. You could say the same thing about any kind of research. But most of the money spent on ‘green jobs’ wouldn’t go to research, but to pay ‘living wage’ salaries to armies of low-skilled people.
Oh, and according to Jones, you can’t do this until you make it much easier to form unions and until there’s a national living wage law. He doesn’t explain WHY you can’t do it without it, but it’s definitely necessary.
Sam that’s a great post. Workfare plus a ‘make a wish’ industrial type policy (easy to politicize the handing out of federal money to right thinking do gooders)…that pretty much sums it up.
Still waiting on the “wind power for .1 cent per hour” cite.
and you can make it even greener if you outsource the job to India.( After all an American house has a huge carbon footprint…heating and airconditioning 3000 square feet so one person can work from home–Seems more wasteful than a central office with 500 people) But if it’s “green”, and the Birkenstock Brigade thinks it’s a cool idea, then it must be right.
I’m not opposed to some logical government assistance to developing solar or wind power.
But I agree with the OP that there is way too much messianic fervor involved.(Telecommute!Pave the desert in solar panels! Cover the entire state of W.Virginia with windmills! Let’s do it now, we don’t have much time before the rapture!
There is of course another option that is not pie-in-the-sky–it ALREADY exists, fully established, produces no carbon, and needs no new science . But it is the n-word, and don’t you dare say it in public!
(quotes are from the Wall St Journal )