Going Green baby!

This from the smart guys over at www.powerlineblog.com. The whole idea of the green movement has always struck me as rather disengious, motivated by fears of a boogeyman and self serving self interest. If the goal is to put more people on welfare-which I suspect it is-then this all starts to make sense.


One of the defining features of the Obama administration so far is its almost pathological inability to make hard choices--or even to acknowledge that hard choices need to be made. A prime example is the administration's insistence that making energy more expensive will somehow benefit our economy. This proposition is so foolish as to be almost self-refuting: in my view, anyone who doesn't understand that you can't create wealth by subsidizing the inefficient production of energy shouldn't be voting.

In particular, Barack Obama has trumpeted the creation of "green jobs" as somehow offsetting the obvious damage that will be done by his cap-and-trade system and other measures that will make conventional energy sources more expensive. He has pointed specifically to Spain as a country whose experience with "green jobs" we should emulate. So an empirical study of Spain's experience is timely. And, as it happens, one has just been done by Dr. Gabriel Calzada of Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

It is reported on here by the Institute for Energy Research. Some highlights:

* The U.S. can expect 2.2 jobs to be destroyed for every 1 renewable job financed by the government.

* Only 1 in 10 of the jobs actually created through green investment is permanent.

* Since 2000, Spain has spent €571,138 ($753,778) to create each "green job," including subsidies of more than €1 million ($1,319,783) per wind industry job.
Those programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 113,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

* Each "green" megawatt installed destroyed 5.39 jobs in non-energy sectors of the Spanish economy.

* The total over-cost--the amount paid over the cost that would result from buying the electricity generated by the renewable power plants at market prices--between 2000 and 2008 amounts to 7,918.54 million Euros ($10 billion).

* The total subsidy spent and committed to these three renewable sources amounts to €28,671 million ($36 billion).

* Consumer energy costs in Spain would have to be increased 31 percent to repay the debt generated by the green jobs subsidies.

The general rule is, whenever anyone says the word "green," grab your wallet and run for the hills.
(Source)

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