AlterNet: Democrats Are Blowing Our Best Chance for Clean Energy

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/89700/?ses=fbb432acf8cbef7084d3763427856abc

Democrats Are Blowing Our Best Chance for Clean Energy

By Kelpie Wilson, AlterNet. Posted June 30, 2008.

How the Dems sacked one of the most important opportunities to turn around our energy future.

Take some of Big Oil's obscene profits and invest the money in developing clean renewable energy for the future. This is the Democrats' big idea on energy and it's a good one, but right now Democrats are botching it badly.

On June 18th, Congress failed for the tenth time this year to pass an extension of the renewable energy tax credits that have nurtured the infant wind and solar power industries in the US but are set to expire at the end of 2008. The tax credit extension should have been included in the big renewable energy bill that Congress passed at the end of 2007, but Republicans blocked the provision because they didn't like closing oil tax loopholes to pay for it.

Some Democrats, like Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, got it, and shifted the approach. Cantwell drafted a bipartisan bill, cosponsored by Nevada Republican John Ensign, to renew the tax credits without requiring a budget offset that would draw a Republican filibuster or a Bush veto.

The problem is that a contingent of House Democrats has continued to insist that no renewable energy tax credit extension be passed unless it can be paid for by cutting some other budget item or by adding revenue -- like increasing taxes on Big Oil. These "pay-go" rules are supposed to establish Democrats as the anti-deficit party and the House leadership has been unmovable on the principle when it applies to renewable energy.

...

[electropop]

1. We will all burn in a hell of our own making.

Great going, Dems. Cave in again on an obvious winner issue. You will pay for this in the fall.

[diane in sf]

2. Is it bribes from corporations or blackmail from Bushco's FISA activities?

[NNadir]

3. Let's bash Democrats for failing to subsidize the rich in ways that the rich want to be subsidized.

In fact, the money spent on so called "renewable energy" is largely wasted.

I hear all the time complaints from people who wouldn't know the best chance for safe energy if it bit them in the ass how nuclear energy is "subsidized" and therefore worthless.

In fact, nuclear energy - which is hardly subsidized enough given its huge merits - is and has been for more than thirty years the world's largest, by far, form of climate change gas free primary energy.

In fact, so called "renewable energy" industry - which is the subject of more than six years of "affordable" propaganda here, all of it coming from yuppie brats - would collapse in 2 hours without massive subsidies, most of which are targeted at the people who need them the least.

As ususal, all that we have here is the usual selective attention.

[bhikkhu]

4. Its hard to see the " most important opportunity" there

The first idea that the oil companies should be punished for having big profits is pretty shaky, and kind of like the junky robbing his dealer. Long-term, there will be problems.

The notion that we need to take from the oil companies and give to the "renewables" (whoever they are) also seems a bit stalinist and questionable. Are there concrete gains and projections of concrete benefits to be had? I am all for "nurturing the infant wind and solar power industries", but I think that there are good ways and bad ways. All the bad ways have already been done, resulting in part in the measly pittance of renewable power in the grid currently. Simply passing money around the top tier and making up dramas to justify who gets rich next has not been serving the purpose.

The energy tax credit needs to be reworked from the ground up looking at what will be the most effective and efficient approach, and leaving punitive sideshows out of it.

[Howzit]

6. I like the way you think and express yourself.

Clear, reasoned and without any dramatics or insults.

[Howzit]

5. "The problem is that a contingent of House Democrats has continued to insist..."

"...that no renewable energy tax credit extension be passed unless it can be paid for by cutting some other budget item or by adding revenue..."

You could always print more money if you don't believe in fiscal responsibility.