tdw is suffering another episode of cognitive dissonance over free trade and market incentives. As Windy ably points out, government cannot just wave it's hand and repeal the laws of physics. Were it so I'd have thought the entire country would be bathed under a Ft. Lauderdale-like sun and we'd cover our roofs with solar panels. Some seem to think that, just like stem cell research, if the government just put that last tiny bit of money into solar and wind the revolution would arrive. What the true believers really aspire to is solar and wind power at any cost. The type of government intervention that they desire is mandatory use of alternative energy.
In Michigan our governor is trying to ram through a policy that will
require that the state derive 25% of it's energy from alternative sources by 2025. You can view that two ways; the date is far enough off as to make the plan meaningless or that things will change radically in the next seventeen years. GM is taking a different approach-at least they say they are-they're developing the Volt and going to being it to market despite the fact they don't have the batteries to make it work! They are hoping that technology will fall from the sky, and soon, to provide batteries to power their dream. The chances of that happening are best illustrated by the new production numbers listed by GM for the Volt. Gone are the days of every garage with one; it's now to be a limited production run. Soon it's going to be very, very similar to the hybrid diesel program. The Clinton administration spearheaded an effort called PNGV to subsidize diesel hybrid development in Detroit. Detroit spent most all the money and quietly pronounced it unfeasible. The Bush administration shifted the focus to fuel cells for hydrogen cars and the news there hasn't been any better.
Greens Say: Kill Pngv, All Diesel Research Programs | Diesel Fuel News | Find Articles at BNET
The point being, that you rarely get the results you want just by subsidizing industry to produce a specific given result. If you wish to subsidize research and then find an application for it that's fine, there's an actual history of such efforts yielding results. But simply saying that you want a diesel car that gets eighty miles per gallon and emits no pollution is too limiting to be effective and it wastes a lot of taxpayer monies. As Windy has remarked, industry is already hot on the trail of any technology currently feasible that they think may have a glimmer of success.
The type of subsidies that the Wombat myopically criticizes going to the oil industry are the same types of subsidies that the US government, and most all governments, give to effective producers. They are indeed myriad and they should, in all likelihood, be eliminated. But then, so should subsidies to the world's most efficient agriculture industry as well. I call the wombat's view myopic because what he fails to acknowledge is that those subsidies go to an industry that currently produces a product that works, a product whose only deficiency is that we do not have more of it. Contrast that with the pie in the sky dreams of diverting those subsidies to alternative energy sources, the one thing of which we know is that-they don't work!
And our furry friend will be well advised to invest in that 'U' mining stock. Eventually we're going to get around to doing what does work, while we continue to investigate alternative sources of energy. The bloom is well off the rose of ethanol, despite tremendous subsidy, and it serves as a perfect example of government rushing in to subsidize
what they want to work.
And it's "the free market crap" that's going to bring all of this to pass. Contrary to the Wombat's assertion, it's the free market that reliably supplies oil to us. It's government and citizen interference with the free market that means we do not have viable alternative energy sources like nuclear operational. Citing Russia and China, two countries desperately trying to enter the twentieth century, does little to advance criticism of the American market or government's intrusions into it. We need less government, not more acknowledgment of government's already pernicious involvement.