‘Green’ Means Living Off the Government

by Paul Chesser, Heartland Institute Correspondent on January 22, 2010

in Blog

As I mentioned yesterday, Scott Brown’s election is making the Democrats do all kinds of things that they wouldn’t have considered even last week. Bloomberg reports that cap-and-trade is dead (citing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for one) for this year, so the Dems’ thinking is to try and move some of the alt-energy initiatives into a jobs bill:

Chief executives officers of Exelon Corp., Nike Inc., and 81 other companies [yesterday] urged Obama and lawmakers to enact climate legislation. In a letter, the group called for “strong policies and clear market signals that support the transition to a low-carbon economy and reward companies that innovate.”

The new Senate version of the jobs bill may include funding for a “cash for caulkers” program providing grants to make homes more energy efficient, said Lowell Ungar, policy director for the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy.

“The money will run out from the recovery act and if there’s not further legislation to push these retrofits, there’s a real risk that the infrastructure we’re creating right now will wither,” Ungar said in an interview. “The people who are being trained right now to do these retrofits will no longer have jobs.”

Translation: “Rewarding companies that innovate” means giving them taxpayer dollars or else they’ll go out of business. Mr. Ungar could not have said it more plainly.

Ralph January 25, 2010 at 6:19 am

Green also means "temporary job". Once a solar array is installed the job stops. Who needs people to maintain a solar array? Maybe 1 at the most? Windmills once erected what else is needed besides maintenance? Temporary jobs are not the answer to revive a bad economy.

nowak joseph February 1, 2010 at 11:20 am

these job will support other job electric vehicles and high speed trains, to maintain these systems and power grid will require lot of full time jobs from Software to Hardware to electrical to electonic this system has to be huge in order to provide ample power and load these loads have to be switch electricily on demand this being done in Germany who has 25% electicity from wind and solar power

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