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Solar Power Is Booming — Why Do We Want To Kill It?
TaeKwonDood writes with a followup to the news we discussed over the weekend about tariffs being places on Chinese solar panels. He writes,
"According to Forbes, 'Solar power is booming. Imports from China were a tepid $21 million in 2005, but in 2011 installations totaled nearly $2.7 billion. That's a huge win. And just as advocates for solar power had hoped, a larger market drove down prices. Solar energy cost has declined by two-thirds in the last four years, meaning it will soon start to close in on fossil fuels.' There's just one problem: now the government wants to kill it. The article continues, 'As the market was flooded by both silicon (from silicon producers) and thin-film panels (by Chinese manufacturers), the price for thin-film panels came crashing down – along with Solyndra’s business model. ... Yet that isn’t the only instance of mismanagement. The whole clean energy program remains flawed, even at the consumer level. The people who are the most likely to be impacted by high energy prices, the poor, are the least likely to benefit from the solar rebate scheme because they lack the capital to pay for the installation.'"
Tell that to the Republicans.
On the one hand they scream (after MASSIVELY SUBSIDIZING their puppetmasters in the big oil companies and the corn lobby) about the subsidization of companies like Solyndra. They do this ignoring the fact that it didn't work because China was engaging in dumping and any trade with China is fundamentally unfair trade due to Chinese environmental-destruction and slave-labor practices.
Then they complain about how Solar power is "not financially viable", and likewise for wind, geothermal, and pretty much every other renewable resource we've got. The Republicans gave the corn lobby a massive gift when Dumbya's administration outlawed MTBE and forced 10% corn ethanol into gas nationwide, despite the fact that corn ethanol is a net loss of energy (1.8 units used for every 1 unit produced) to make. The subsidization of the oil industry is orders of magnitude larger than any subsidization we've ever given to clean power.
It's like when 50 years ago the Democrats became beholden to the Teamsters; in came big trucking and the subsidized interstate system, meanwhile rail shipping - far more energy efficient for long distances - got fucked up the ass having to eat the costs of maintaining the rail lines unsubsidized.
If you see a government policy that's fucked up on energy, follow the money. Chances are, this decade there's a Koch hand behind it - the decade you choose you may find someone else.
The US designs stuff, now? Pretty much everything in my house is designed by a Japanese or Thai or Korean company. A US company might have designed the basic idea for some of it more than 60 years ago, but nothing new or interesting comes out of America today.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
From orbit. That's the only way to be sure.
'Cos there ain't no meter on the Sun,
No, there ain't no meter on the Sun.
How ya gonna charge
Enough to keep ya livin' large
When there ain't no meter on the Sun?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."