'It's a debate between looking backward and looking forward'

Clean energy technologies arent necessarily clean and arent competitive. It takes more energy to make solar panels than you can save through the live of the panel. Until there is grid parity with nuclear or coal energy, we are throwing tax dollars down a hole.

This isn't about generating electricity. This is about generating more government revenue from you rubes.

tww wrote:

Clean energy technologies arent necessarily clean and arent competitive. It takes more energy to make solar panels than you can save through the live of the panel. Until there is grid parity with nuclear or coal energy, we are throwing tax dollars down a hole.

i agree. there is a lot of bogus "green rhetoric" that gives environmentalists a warm and fuzzy, but does little tangible good. bjorn lomborg has done a lot of economic research on what the gore/UN ilk wants to spend on cutting carbon emissions, and even the IPCC thinks that spending 800 billion will only slow warming by 0.3 degrees over 90 years!

and as to the types of technology we are investing in, read the following:

"So where does President Obama stand on the choice between these two paths? He has promised to spend $150 billion over the next decade on clean technology. This could do a lot of good, if he uses it primarily to invest in creating new technologies, rather than simply subsidizing existing ones (which is much easier politically). Investing in current-day solar panels costs a lot for little benefit. Germany is the leading consumer of solar panels and will end up spending about $150 billion on them, yet the effect will be to delay global warming by one hour by the end of the century. However, investing in the creation of an entirely new way to harness the energy of the sun that can become competitive with fossil fuels will mean that everyone, including China and India, can shift to a low-carbon economy sooner rather than later." [Lomborg]

"It's a debate between looking backward and looking forward"

That's true. I think the Manifesto was written in 1848.