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Solar Power On the White House
CartaNova writes "The Obama administration has announced plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the White House. The Carter administration had previously installed a 32-panel solar system at the White House — which was quietly removed during Reagan's tenure in office. Solar hot water and Photovoltaic firms had been campaigning on this issue for some time."
I don't think it's "Americans don't like solar power." Most Americans I know (liberals and conservatives) like solar power. It's cool technology, and getting free energy from the sun sounds like such a good deal.
If you hear about Americans objecting to solar power, it's probably objecting to the government subsidies for installing solar panels. Conservatives and Libertarians tend to support the idea that we should focus on making the technology cheaper, then people will install it on their own, rather than subsidizing it.
Qxe4
Yes there is a extremely good reason we could care less about solar and especially solar electrical power.
I could care more.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
More like, individuals pursuing their own goals will do a better job of allocating resources than a pack of bureaucrats trying to manage the economy. Your characterization of the free market as some kind of miracle betrays your own ignorance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Also, our President is getting solar power, if you hadn't heard.
Apparently the public often misses it when the President installs solar. G W Bush installed solar. From the fans of W at the Huffington Post:
"In 2003, solar photovoltaic panels were installed at the White House. Two smaller solar thermal systems were also installed to heat water: one for landscape maintenance personnel, the other for the presidential pool and spa. The Bush Administration itself never really announced the project."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/white-house-solar-panels_n_160575.html
I don't think of it as a miracle, but it appears that some conservatives and libertarians do. Note that I don't make the claim that socialism (or bureaucratism for that matter) is any better. I just don't think that the whole "free market solves all" method is going to work in every case.
It makes individual sense to do a lot of things that are detrimental to human society, or even local society as a whole. In some cases, it is better to regulate the cost of a particular resource to reflect the actual societal cost of its extraction or use. That's something the "free" market is horrible at.
The most effective solar and wind power device is drying clothing outside. It not only saves electricity, but actually cooling down an environment.
The problem is that it may look unaesthetic, unless a nice looking dryer is invented. Meanwhile drying clothing in the air is forbidden in many districts and even entire cities.
The effectiveness of drying is 100%. No energy is being lost. And the volume is enormous, - billions of people wash and dry clothing everyday.
Production of dryers does not involve any toxic material and is not expensive. But if clothing is dried in electrical driers then a lot, a lot of electrical energy is being used.
I would argue that the problem of global warming would be solved, if drying outdoors would be not forbidden, but promoted. Of course, after an invention of a aesthetic outdoor drier.
Reagan didn't just take the solar panels off the white house, that's symbolic. Reagan also slashed the budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by 90%. This facility currently holds, and regularly held in the past decade or so, the records for the highest efficiency photovoltaics and other types of devices. So if you ask me why solar panels sucked in the past, it was because there was not very much research in solar power going on for the entire decade of the 80s.
I'm guessing Reagan rationalized these actions as reducing the federal budget. The only problem with that logic is that the guy ran up a bigger deficit in defense projects than Carter (or just about any other president besides Bush, Jr.). But that's typical, when conservative politicians speak about reducing the deficit, that is usually code for cutting programs that they just don't like and has nothing to do with the actual deficit.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Well, one example is the free market will never properly price externalities, such as pollution. Pollution is free - just let it spew out the smokestack, or dump it in the river. This caused widespread problems.
So the government added a price to pollution.
The White House submits a preliminary budget proposal, the House and Senate formulate legislation, the two separate versions get reconciled, and then the president signs (or doesn't). Reagan always claimed that the ballooning deficits on his watch were due to Congress, but most of his proposals were unbalanced to begin with and he always signed, claiming he had no choice. Clinton proved Reagan's claims of powerlessness to be hollow in 1995, vetoing the Republican-controlled Congress' proposed budget and thereby shutting down the government for almost a week until Newt Gingrich caved.
So Congress has sole power to pass the legislation but the White House can play a very significant role if they have the will to do so. It always has seemed ironic to me that Reagan and Reaganites claim the mantle of deficit reduction while the facts are that the ration of Debt / GDP (i.e., what we owe relative to our aggregate income) dropped pretty much continuously from WWII to Reagan and then skyrocketed under all subsequent administrations except Clinton's. Republicans try to claim credit for the Clinton years, ignoring the fact that Clinton stared them down.