Cyreenik Says
This 27 Dec 10 WSJ Heard on the Street, Dangerous Patriot Games for Renewable Energy by Liam Denning, shows the hazard of powering a cause with just good intentions, not with any cost-benefit in mind.
The renewable energy industries around the world live and die on government subsidies. This article shows how the solar panel version is now wrapped up in controversy about whether or not those subsidies are nationalist in character or not.
If the solar panel purchasers are not favoring domestic suppliers, then national groups, such as unions and "Buy [my country] first" pressure groups, will argue that they should be. If the procurers do favor domestic suppliers, then trade groups from other countries will shriek that this is protectionism-in-action.
Either way, the industry and the purchasers cannot defend their choices on economic (cost-benefit) grounds, because the choices have nothing to do with economics, and everything to do with guilt, "After all, we need to save the world, don't we?"
This is the dark side of modern day goat sacrificing.
Update: yet another example of goat sacrificing: an 18 Jan 11 WSJ editorial, Solar Power Eclipse, which talks about the fate of the resources Massachusetts taxpayers have burnt on the Altar of Green supporting Evergreen Solar, a solar power manufacturer who has now shuttered their solar panal manufacturing plant in Massachusetts.
Update: Another WSJ editorial describing goat sacrificing: Ethanol production in the US. This 22 Jan 11 editorial, Amber Waves of Ethanol. Highlight: four of every ten rows of corn grown in the US now go for fuel, not food. This at a time when there is rising food inflation world wide and the green value of ethanol fuel has been shown to be so low that even Al Gore has given up on it.
Update: Another fine example of billion dollar goat sacrificing. This time people are donating to fight disease in Africa, but as they rest easier at night they are paying to support massive corruption which is actually slowing the development of the nations being donated to. AP Enterprise: Fraud plagues global health fund, 23 Jan 11 by John Heilprin.
Update: Yet another example of goat sacrificing: The government selecting and lavishly financing and subsidizing a green fuel project, cellulosic ethanol, before checking if it even had a chance of working. WSJ 10 Feb 11 The Range Fuels Fiasco.
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