It aint easy being green.....

It aint easy being green…..

I am quite sure that the Kermit in the White House spends many hours contemplating his navel and bemoaning this fact.

After all…everything green that he has touched has turned to crap of one sort or another.

Solyndra is just one of many companies supported by the green program that has resulted in dismal failure and the loss of around half a billion taxpayer dollars. I assure you, it will not be the last.

And so today we get some totally unexpected news that highlights the huge success that was the Obama green jobs program. A huge success. The $500 million set aside as part of the 2009 stimulus program for the creation of green jobs has been a roaring success. So far, 26,000 people have been trained for green jobs, and a massive 8,000 have landed green jobs.

I am being a little disingenuous here, because it turns out that only about 1/3^rd of the funding has actually been spent (about $163 million) ….so if my math is correct, when the rest is spent there may be another 16, 000 jobs landed? Maybe.

Here’s the problem. Or rather several problems:-

1.      If jobs are so essential that Obama has to try to rush his latest jobs bill through Congress, or find ways around Congress to achieve his ends….why is it that jobs directed stimulus money has not been spent since 2009? Surely, he could advance job creation by speeding up the spending already approved?

2.      If green industry is the path for the future, why is it that only 8,000 jobs have been created in the last 2 years?

 

Something stinks here, and Kermit knows it!

What has actually happened is that the 2009 stimulus money was not in fact really a jobs stimulus, but was just another attempt by Kermit to force an industry that is not yet ready to even consider being prime-time, into direct competition with the big players on a world stage, without any inkling of how it can meet the price points that make it competitive.

Kermit has decided that the future for American industry is totally aligned with green technology and has chosen to redistribute your tax money to an industry that cannot survive on its own merits. Actually, it doesn’t seem able to survive on any merits, including the government attempting to pick winners and losers.

Now, I am not saying that green technologies shouldn’t be explored, shouldn’t be developed and shouldn’t be commercialized. In fact, I believe that they should be…I believe there is opportunity for great economic and ecological savings by pursuing these technologies.

What I AM saying is that government should NOT be funding that. I have no problem with DARPA and other military and quasi-military organizations funding development of specific projects at their discretion, but I do have a problem with the government (Kermit-in-Chief) determining that your tax money should be spent supporting entire industries or even certain favored companies within those industries…especially when such support is clearly by direction of the fool in the White House.

And here’s another thing…the much vaunted electric cars and hybrids that so many people are wanting are a good example of transferring pollution from the end user to the energy producer. When my gas burning car coughs and sneezes, plumes of smoke blow into the air where I am driving. The inefficiencies of my cars engine are felt at the gas pump every time I refill and the air I pollute is the same air I breathe.

I have a friend who drives a Nissan Leaf.  His clean electric engine does not puff clouds of smoke into the air where he drives. He fills it up by plugging into the wall in his garage and doesn’t see the cost (until he gets his power bill). He also doesn’t see the clouds of smoke that are released into the air at the power plant that produces the energy that comes from his plug in the wall. He doesn’t know when that plant is inefficient, coughing and sneezing pollutants into the air hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles away from where he drives.

On a side note....it is clear that hybrid and electric car sales are in the doldrums...which goes to show that even a titan like Nissan cannot turn over a new Leaf!)

Green cars simply move the problem of burning fossil fuels from the car driver to the plant. It is simply the transferal of pollution, and usage of a finite energy source.

Now, if the power was generated by clean nuclear power stations, that would be a different story.

Or, if the power was produced by wind, solar or geothermal energy plants, the story would be different.

But it is not. And no amount of advertising the clean nature of green cars will ever change that fact.

So, why not create clean energy…green energy such as solar, wind and geothermal?

The answer is simple. The technology has not advanced sufficiently for these power sources to be:-

1. Reliable

2.      2. Of sufficient quantity to meet current needs

3.      3. Competitively priced

And that is why government should not be wasting taxpayer money is training people for green jobs.

The industry does not have enough jobs to support them. Until those three things come into line, the industry will not ever be able to support green trained employees in the numbers Kermit wants to see.

The industry remains in its development stage. It is immature. It does not even know yet whether the technology advances in the future will lead to long term viability.

Even the players in this industry know it is a crap shoot….so why does the government play craps with your money?

Because it meets Kermits ideological pursuits.

That is the ONLY reason.

As I said…it aint easy being green….

…..devereaux