Political Left Crucifies Itself on a Great Green Cross

The left-leaning newspaper, the Washington Post, recently published an atypically honest editorial look at the green energy dysfunction -- a malady that afflicts a large proportion of modern leftist politicians -- including Barack Obama, Al Gore, Angela Merkel, Julia Gillard, Francois Hollande, and more . . .

Green energy is not cost-competitive with traditional energy and won’t be for years. So it can’t work without either taxpayer subsidies, much of which accrue to “entrepreneurs” such as Gore, or higher prices for fossil energy — the brunt of which is borne by people of modest means.

Consider California’s “net metering” subsidy for solar-panel users. As the New York Times reported in June, the program hugely benefits well-off consumers who can afford to install photovoltaic panels. They get sun power for their homes — plus an excess supply that utilities must buy. Thus utilities must also pay to keep them on the grid. Those costs get passed along to everyone else — including low-income customers.

For a sense of where this may lead, look at Germany, whose crash program to replace nuclear power with wind and solar is boosting electricity rates. Der Spiegel reports that 200,000 long-term unemployed lost power in 2011 because they couldn’t pay their electric bills.

Democrats try to square this circle by talking up “green jobs,” but expensive electricity is bad for industry, as Germany is discovering. Fact is, subsidies for green energy do not so much create jobs as shift them around.

...Government, with its inevitable susceptibility to lobbying and favoritism, should not be picking winners and losers, whether through green subsidies or tax breaks for oil and gas.

It’s one thing to lose your job because a competing firm built a superior mouse trap; it’s quite another, justice-wise, to lose it because a competitor talked the government into taking its side. _Washington Post

The editorialist Charles Lane was explicitly singling out Al Gore as a corrupt recipient of green government favours -- to the tune of about $100 million.

But the great green dysfunction is infested by corrupt hypocrites such as Gore. Barack Obama himself is unlikely to be satisfied with any less of a big money payday than Al Gore received, after leaving office.

And yet, there is a limit to the degree to which a moribund economy can be scammed, after a certain point. Obama may find himself to be one of the victims of his own great green dysfunctional policies. He may have to settle for only $50 million, for starters.