It's disgusting. . .
And yet, my take on this is probably different from most people. I don't care about subsidies or incentives for wind and solar power. Wind power isn't scalable to solve our energy problems. Solar may actually be a useful supplement, eventually, if the costs can be reduced enough, but even solar has some pretty serious shortcomings (such as no continuous baseload generation).
What I'd like to see is a repeal of all those massive subsidies that the fossil fuel industries enjoy. Big oil, big gas, and big coal should be taxed to compensate for the damage they cause, not given lavish hand-outs. If we even had a level playing field, then clean energy could make a lot of progress.
Your traditional energy bill in Congress contains hundreds of millions -- sometimes billions -- in subsidies for oil, gas and coal. Greenies are typically satisfied when they get a couple million tossed at their pet research project to power an experimental organic farm off pig farts. Now they're whining because they aren't even getting those bread crumbs.
In the bigger picture it makes zero difference whether they get a few bread crumbs for wind and solar. Wind and solar are already getting plenty of private investment.
Here's my prescription for an energy bill. . .
1. Repeal all subsidies for oil, gas and coal.
2. Charge a modest "carbon tax" on oil, gas and coal.
3. Charge a depletion tax and import tariff on oil.
4. Put new nuclear plants on a fast track to construction.
5. Put some research money into geothermal and nuclear fusion.
As far as I can see, nothing resembling any of these points is even being considered in the Congress. It's business as usual, with more handouts to big oil and big coal.
