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    Who are the NERD fund donors Mr Snyder?

    Raise the curtain.

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    I got that fact... (none / 0) (#18)
    by Seth9 on Fri Sep 10, 2010 at 11:46:17 AM EST
    ...off of a friend who is a farmer. They don't use crude oil or anything, but they use large hydrocarbons in their fertilizer, which is essentially oil.

    Sensible green energy policy means that the government provides some form of economic incentive for people to produce or buy renewable-energy technologies that have high capital costs but are cost-effective in the long term. These incentives should generally be at the state level, because the effectiveness of different renewable energy technologies varies based on geography. For instance, solar panels are a lot more effective in Arizona than they are in Michigan. Also, the Department of Energy or scientific should actually look at the actual specifications of such technologies and do cost-analyses for each individual product of that technology to figure out whether such an investment would be cost effective before allowing it to qualify for government incentives. One of the major issues with solar are that a number of cheaper solar panels will never be cost effective due to their short lifespans and low efficiencies, but people buy them because they qualify for government aid and they are the cheapest choice.

    Finally, these incentives do not necessarily have to be in the form of tax credit or subsidies. I am not inherently opposed to such actions because I think they would be beneficial from an environmental perspective and oil also receives government subsidies, but I doubt many of you would be OK with that. An alternative would be to simply give low-interest loans to people who buy viable, cost effective green technologies, which they would be able to pay back with the savings they would make in the long term from such a conversion.

    Of course, the most sensible government energy policy would be to invest in nuclear energy, which is clearly viable and produces no carbon emissions, but support for this is not high because a lot of people are afraid of technologies using the word nuclear and the environmental lobby is scared that the small amount of resultant waste will one day make the empty desert we store it in uninhabitable...which is one of many reasons that I don't like the environmental lobby.

    Parent

    • Nuclear.. by JGillman, 09/10/2010 12:04:45 PM EST (none / 0)

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