About energy policy: get government out of the business.

Going (way) back to my issue about having government choose the winners and losers (especially when it is apparent the motives are anything but transparent, possibly criminal, and benefit the companies who are not in energy businesses to begin with). What BO has stated for years is that the path to alternative energy and a cleaner environment is to make carbon-based energy so expensive and/or scarce that you don't have an alternative (choice) except for what the government has developed for you (with your tax dollars, but without input from the very industry it destroys).

When was the last time government developed a successful product? Atom bomb (wait, that was technically "successful," just not an allowable source of energy)? Cure for cancer? Even decoding the human genome has produced nothing life changing for the billions we spent. The moon program produced a lot of valuable engineering, but it was private industry that produced products. Take the core research and patents behind Kevin Costner's oil separation centrifuges, one he bought from the Dept. of Energy after Valdez. My point is not about the effectiveness of his product, it is that DOE and the other government agencies failed to do anything with it (or anything else) where there was a clear need, and compelling government interest. An actor and dreamer built it instead. So why do we expect the government to produce any effective carbon energy alternatives?

What started this rant? Two articles from the same blog, Master Resource.

One is an excellent explanation about effective grass roots activism that goes contrary to what we usually expect from the green side. This approach addresses how to deal with the emotional blackmail like save the polar bears. The subject in this case is wind energy. The writer is equally passionate on the subject of why not wind turbines. Grass roots strategy: go for the juggler.

The other is an article that explains just how losers become winners by applying political influence they obtain, not by being knowledgeable about energy or alternative energy, rather by using credibility from being perceived as successful doing something else. Do they have energy solutions? No, they are spouting off the same drivel we have been getting for years: more committees, more theoretical speculators -- people who have your skin in the game not theirs, and who benefit from that whole process, not from the results.  These people are always around to make sure their interests and friends are first in line at the government trough. It has nothing to do with party.

This regime is a poster child for "the ends justifies the means" (classic Alinsky), with the post-modern twist of the means is the end. In other words, keep spending your tax dollars and never get anywhere, just drive around for a few decades. Let the good times roll on. And if having committees who borrow the credibility of scientists to promote their political agenda doesn't scare you, you haven't read my post here.