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Obama Wants To Fund Clean Energy Research With Oil & Gas Funds
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama Administration has put forth a proposal to collect $2 billion over the next 10 years from revenues generated by oil and gas development to fund scientific research into clean energy technologies. The administration hopes the research would help 'protect American families from spikes in gas prices and allow us to run our cars and trucks on electricity or homegrown fuels.' In a speech at Argonne National Laboratory, Obama said the private sector couldn't afford such research, which puts the onus on government to keep it going. Of course, it'll still be difficult to get everyone on board: 'The notion of funding alternative energy research with fossil fuel revenues has been endorsed in different forms by Republican politicians, including Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowsi. But the president still faces an uphill battle passing any major energy law, given how politicized programs to promote clean energy have become in the wake of high-profile failures of government-backed companies.'"
It is unfortunate that government is apt to pursue political solutions rather than viable practical solutions. That's the world we live in.
The premise here is that gas and oil companies should be punished, and their gains should be confiscated and given to other companies with better intentions. The real world truth is that there are no oil or gas companies anymore, and there hasn't been for the last fifteen years, at least.
No, what used to be oil companies have all become energy companies. They all invest heavily in alternative energy technologies, because they have the most to lose if anything does become viable and threatens their current revenue generators. I've spoken with several former CEO's of these former oil companies, and they were, to a person, fixated on the end of oil and the emergence of alternative energy sources. I left these conversations wondering why these CEO's were more pro-alternative than any environmentalist I had ever met.
The government confiscation of funds from these companies, and the eventual redistribution to campaign donors fronting "new" energy companies will only slow down the discovery of practical and sustainable alternative energy sources.
-- Len
His fisrt term he put $80 Billion towards this. You will remember great hits like Solendra, A123, and Fisker. The list of companies getting the money from that original program read like a whos-who of campaign donors. Many of the companies went bankrupt quickly after getting the federal money and none of them produced anything usable.
So, to anser your question "How is this not a good idea?" The track record is this will be a slush fund to reward his friends and accomplish nothing useful. Corrupt politics and corporate cronyism at its finest. Nothing to do with "socialism", just plain theft.
No problem agreeing with you on the fact that theft is a two party activity. The point is that this is just more money being pissed away while we go into a hole at a rate of around 100 billion dollars a month. Enough already!
Let's also fix the market failures of air pollution and carbon emissions by internalizing their costs into the price of fossil fuels. If you agree that correcting market failures makes the free market more efficient, then you must be in favor of a carbon tax.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.