Another in a continuing series of the gross misunderestimation of the externalities for the ways we presently produce energy and how these skew the perceptions of renewables. Take it away, Tom:
Let’s start with a recent editorial from the home of “free markets and free people,” the Wall Street Journal. Photovoltaic solar energy, quoth the mavens, is a “speculative and immature technology that costs far more than ordinary power.”
So few words, so many misconceptions. It pains me to say that because, like many business leaders, I grew up on the Wall Street Journal and still depend on it.
But I cannot figure out why people who call themselves “conservatives” would say solar or wind power is “speculative.” Conservatives know that word is usually reserved to criticize free-market activity that is not approved by well, you know who.
Today, around the world, more than a million people work in the wind and solar business. Many more receive their power from solar.
Solar is not a cause; it is a business with real benefits for its customers.
Read all about it. Clueless minions being manipulated by the producers of ‘ordinary energy’. This is all of piece with the Jane Mayer story from last week. Like the politics, the arguments against non-fossil energy sources fall apart if their proponents grant even the most minimal parameters of reality – which is why Al Gore must be fat, and Obama must be a Muslim.