When it comes to technologies like wind and solar power, many people feel they are a waste of time and money. Without government subsidies, wind and solar could not compete. Wind and sun are inconsistent. The amount of power they give goes up and down, even stops altogether. Much of today's wind mill fleet is sitting doing nothing because there is not enough money and personal to fix them. And of course, coal is cheaper. The other so called green technologies come with similar problems. Who wants a $100,000 electric car that goes 200 miles on a charge? Who wants to wait hours to refuel when a stop at the pump takes a few minutes? Why is the government wasting money on ideas that just don't work?
But consider this; Toyota and Honda both brought out hybrids in 2000. All the extra equipment added thousands of dollars to each car. Neither company could afford to pass all of the expense on to the public. People would not buy a hybrid at that price. so, Honda and Toyota made less money on hybrids. Each year the cost of a hybrid car becomes less expensive to build. But still today in 2009, Toyota makes lower profit on hybrid than on standard models. What a bunch of idiots. Except, Japan has taken a larger and larger share of the American car market since the 1960's. Toyota has become the world’s number one automaker. Auto makers don’t have to pay lip service to liberal voters. Why would a successful money hungry company waste money on an idiot idea that only hippie tree huggers want?
The reason is, Toyota expects to be in business longer than the next ten years. Japan is kicking our ass because they plan for the long haul. Nobody wins with yesterday’s technology. Victory requires constant innovation. This work can not take place in a lab. You have move a product for true advancement. A sputtering mess the product might be, but only the market place will tell you how to improve it. Only a market product will pay for the enormous cost of making the product competitive. Coming up with an entirely new way of doing things takes decades. There are no shortcuts. If you don't pay the price, you fall by the wayside. American automakers appear to be doing just that. (This isn't my opinion. Read Newsweek, Time, The Economist.) Whether the big three fail or not, their lack of innovation will cost them. More than it already has.
Toyota did not have to spend a billions on the hybrid. The hybrid would have come out without them. They could have waited till some other company brought out the hybrid,let that company spend billions of dollars, steal their ideas, and put out their own hybrid without going through the unprofitable years. But then that car company would have all the research, all the technicians, the labs, the factories. That company would have the loyal costumers who had been driving one of that companies hybrids for years. Toyota had to get their hybrids out first. Toyota had to deliver a product to the market, ready or not, so they could capture the market.
An all electric vehicle may not be practical right now. Is that a good reason to go on being oil dependent on often hostile foreign nations that pay no American taxes and create no American jobs? Is that a good reason to plan for more of the same for decades to come. Toyota did not go broke funding the development of batteries and electric engines and neither would we. Japan developed its small hybrid fleet by letting its large gasoline fleet pay for it. We should do the same.
Right now much American coal is mined by blasting the tops off of mountains. This chokes rivers and streams with dust that fall for miles around. If the rock over top of the coal is acid the dust from the blasting is too. Hundreds of money producing rivers and streams have been dammed up or poisoned by dust. Hundreds of miles of money making farms and parks have been acidified by mountain top removal. (and if you live on the east coast you likely have eaten poisoned fish or farm food from the coal area or the ocean near it.) Once mined, coal ore is taken to plants where it is turned into usable coal with harsh chemicals. The unwanted leavings of this process are left in giant open air tailing ponds. As we are now aware, these tailing ponds are not very secure and can spill into the country side. When the coal slurry retaining wall broke in Tennessee miles of farm land, rivers, lakes, parks were contaminated for years to come. Homes, schools, and businesses destroyed. The cost to the American economy is enormous. Does a 30% subsidy for wind and solar power seem so bad in that light. Only so much can be done to clean coal. If we stop mountain top removal and force the coal industry to better manage their waste, the cost of mining and refining coal goes up. A so called clean coal plant costs more than an old coal plant and is not so clean. An old coal plant shoots deadly pollutants out of its stack and into the air where it poisons the economy. Clean coal puts many, but not all, of these poisons into the fly ash. The old fly ash could be sold for many industrial purposes. Fly ash from a 'clean' coal plant is hazardous waste. There is no way to dispose of it without polluting something. Coal will always be dirty.
The coal industry and its supporters would have you believe it is all about money. They are right. We lose money from the damage done to our economy by the coal industry. We lose money making something that will never be clean cleaner. We lose money subsidizing alternative energy. All choices cost. Making coal cleaner and continuing to subsidize alternatives is the choice that costs us the least and the choice that makes us money in the long run.
The cost of wind power has gone down by 80%. Solar power has done even better. These amazing reductions in price came about because of government funded research. It is insane to cut off the funding when we are so close to the goal of not needing a subsidy. There is nothing wrong with solar and wind that continued funding won't fix. For every problem I have heard a dozen solutions. None of those solutions have yet become economical but one of them will. The more funding we give the quicker the solution will be found.
Coal produces nearly half of the United States electricity. This can not be changed overnight. It will take Toyota decades to switch over to all electric vehicles. It will take us decades to get rid of coal. Let us start now.
For too long environmentalists have been the butt of stupid jokes. We have been called tree huggers, dreamers, and idiots. New ways of doing things need to be researched and funded. No one company can afford to do all the work so the government has to pay. Just like they helped paid for the development of the submarine, radar, television, satellites, the phone system, computers, the internet, and just about everything we take for granted today. The people who are telling you that the new technology will never work are the dreamers. They long for a beautiful simple past that never existed. They want to hold things still in an ever changing world. They said man would never fly. They advised people not to invest in telephones and computers. We need a new way of doing things, not to save the trees and flowers and all the cute little bunnies but to save ourselves. We need to do it for the same reasons that Toyota made the hybrid, to make ourselves stronger, to ensure our future, and to make a ton of money. If you are one of the people who thinks we can keep doing the same things over and over without change, you need to get the hell out of the way and stop hurting America.
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