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| Private | 83% | 85 votes | Total: 102 votes | |
| Gov't | 17% | 17 votes |
Private
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Add to FavoritesCan somebody please tell me what happened to all the talk of alternative fuels that will help free us from our dependence on foreign oil? Last year at this time, you couldn't watch television or listen to the radio for more than thirty minutes without hearing a talking point about our need for energy autonomy, then...poof!
So the guy on the left wins and all of a sudden, the ideas which he so vividly described (images of ethanol-powered cars and wind turbine farms and tens of thousands of good-paying jobs for would-be government workers), evaporate like a hockey rink in Arizona.
Granted, Mr. Obama has had a pretty full plate during his first 100 days in office, what with the GM and Wall Street bail-outs, responding (or not) to saber rattling in Iran and North Korea, the ever-popular universal health care issue, and picking out a family dog, but do you think the issue of alternative energy is lying dormant in Washington, waiting patiently while other, more pressing matters get ironed out? I don't.
In fact, if we do not keep abreast of exactly what is going on in Washington with regard to alternative energy legislation, we run the risk of thousands of small business opportunities being pushed out of a pristine marketplace by what essentially amounts to a government monopoly. The truth is, they're not talking about it because they're doing it, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed on 17 February of this year, is proof of that.
Now, I'm not saying that the government shouldn't give alternative energy the push it needs to get going in this country. The government should have done something during the original energy crisis in 1975, but that administration seemed to make a habit out of dropping the ball on every issue that affected America's economic stability, national security and global credibility.
In any case, there's really nothing grossly objectionable about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aside from the fact that it turns a lucrative marketplace into a bureaucratic agency. If you are an entrepreneur, or even an American who believes that the principles of capitalism are what have made this country the richest in the history of the world, you shouldn't stand for this. I, for one, do not want to wake up one morning to find that the Army Corp of Engineers has planted a wind turbine in my backyard. That's just one step closer to '1984' becoming an instruction manual, rather than a warning.
Learn more about this author, Tom Cholewa.
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Gov't
The private sector is more efficient, more likely to introduce new technology and driven by the need to succeed. And here is the reason why the public sector is very unlikely to produce clean alternative energy without major government intervention.
Alterna tive energy demands a huge initial investment with little chance of a profit margin until well into the future. The private sector won't be willing to invest such large sums when they have shareholders to answer to each year and profits to make now.
It's also the government who need to grant planning and other permissions for the giant onshore or offshore wind farms, hydropower generation and various other structures needed to generated and store renewable energy.
For this reason, many private organizations require grants or some kind of financial assistance to subsidise the running costs of these new schemes. Without government assistance and support, many private firms will refuse to enter into anything more than the much-needed research.
But I think that the private sector are actually in a much better situation than the government to produce the clean, green, alternative energy we need to save the planet. From an environmental point of view, the government have a lot more to lose by failing to promote environmentally friendly energy, but with worldwide rising energy prices and a more ethically aware public, the private sector can now also gain by promoting the possibility of lower energy prices and a more ethical working practice.
There's a new town centre development project close to where I live which has the opportunity to be environmentally friendly and off-set the rent of the flats and shops with the lower energy bills from renewable energy sources and extra insulation. But the project is unlikely to go ahead and be either as environmentally friendly or as efficient as it could be because private sector companies won't make enough profit to make the development viable and the local council aren't promoting and insisting on using the possible alternative energy sources.
In this case, a small move by the council could set off something big in the private sector. If governments make the first moves and show willing to the private sectors, this will give them a lead to move forward themselves.
But whole governments can also succeed or fail based on the support they get from businesses so it works the other way round as well. They need to subsidise research and projects of big organizations to keep their backing and co-operation. Yet without the initiation and encouragement from the government, it's unlikely that the private sector will make a move. So I think it's ultimately the dangling carrot from the government's stick which is needed to motivate the private sector into the action on the scale we need to see.
Learn more about this author, Ben Hughes.
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