Let's Give Green Companies A Little Encouragement, Madge.

To begin with, I don't know why I added "Madge" nor do I know who or what "Madge" is. I do know with one hundred percent certainty that it is not Madonna.

That said, I always have a lot of tabs open in my browser. And I usually have several windows open too. I'm going to assume I have around thirty open at this very moment, and most of them are from the New York Times. One article that is really bothering me though is something I've known about for awhile now: Green companies get no respect.

Consider that as a country we rely on oil. Oil from other countries, mind you. Yes, we have oil, but we've also depleted most of it. And I don't think we need to be drilling in the arctic destroying the habitats of polar bears. People who want that can go fuck themselves.

There's coal, yes, but coal isn't green at all. Even clean coal is something of a misnomer. They just take the dirtiness of coal and hide and bury it. Doing that has never come back to bite us in the ass though, right? Coal is awful for the environment, and it's awful for the workers who have to mine it. It literally kills them by the second. I wouldn't work in a coal mine if they paid me ten million dollars an hour, and you shouldn't either. I hate knowing that thousands of families across the country have to deal with the repercussions of coal-mining.

There's natural gas, too. I don't know a lot about natural gas except that it's better for cooking, and T. Boone Pickens gets a hard-on any time he talks about it. But of course he's an oil-turned-gas magnate, so he's biased. Though he does have a very cool name. What I do know is that the way they find gas is not safe.

Basically, they use pressurized water and chemicals to blast through miles of rock to get to the gas. These chemicals are secret. They guard them as if they are the recipe for KFC or Coca-Cola. The only thing is, these chemicals get into the water supply and kill people. While being able to set the water from your faucet on fire might be cool for a YouTube video, I don't think you should be able to ignite your tap water.



Wind and solar are free, though, and there is plenty of solar energy out there. We can even predict solar energy pretty well, what with sunrise and sunset and cloud cover and such. Or we can just do what the Chamber of Commerce wants and ditch renewable energy for Oil and Gas.

Can we, in the economic times in which we find ourselves, continue to fund the type of research and development that were spent in the stimulus package on very high cost energy sources? It may be lovely to think about a world without fossil fuels, but that simply is not America's reality.

Yes, he's right. We shouldn't try to progress at all. Maybe we should wait until we deplete everything.

“Can we, in the economic times in which we find ourselves, continue to fund the type of research and development and the types of monies that were spent in the stimulus package on very high-cost energy sources?” Harbert said….

“It may be lovely to think about a world without fossil fuels, but that simply is not America’s energy reality.”

Which brings me to this New York Times article about a Solar Panel company out of Massachusetts. In a nutshell, because they innovated and with some government assistance from Massachusetts, they grew, eventually becoming the third-largest solar panel company in the country. But now they are closing shop here in America, laying off 800, and shipping production to China. This is unacceptable.

This isn't an isolated incident, either. China is kicking our asses in everything green.

- First Solar plans to build the biggest solar plant...in China

- Congress removing programs that encourage investment in renewable energy.

In its current form, the deal would allow the only effective federal support mechanism for renewable electricity to expire, killing the 20,000 wind energy jobs and 11,200 jobs in geothermal that would be created in 2011, and the 65,000 jobs in solar over the next two years.

In addition, without an extension of the Renewable Energy Grant Program (1603), the domestic wind industry will lay off upwards of 25 percent of its workforce -- 20,000 people

And I agree with Rep Markey (from Massachusetts). The best way to increase jobs is with new industries. How many more jobs in coal, oil, or gas can there be? How many jobs can there be in Solar, wind, and other renewable sources?

Last year, republicans blocked any attempt to move forward on renewable energy, and it cost us, literally. Aside from any jobs that were lost, or simply not created, it lost us investors. With no hope for America to lead in renewable energy, foreign investors had no choice but to put their money elsewhere, costing us trillions of dollars.

These solar panels on the roof of the Jets Training Center? Not American.

There is a bright spot though. We exported more than we imported in 2009, to the tune of $723 million. This is good, but now great. For such a large booming industry, we can do much better. Oil and gas get tens-of-billions of dollars in subsidies alone.

Really, what we ought to do is encourage renewable. By definition, it isn't going anywhere. It is a fact that one day we will run out of oil. Coal will run out, too, as will natural gas. We need to discourage nonrenewable energy and encourage renewable. Why do oil giants need billions of dollars in subsidies? Why cant those subsidies go to progressing our energy policies? There is nothing progressive about oil. Natural gas is leading people to their deaths and destroying ecosystems. Coal, too, is just killing Americans.

Subsidize solar and wind. We need the jobs.

I'll end on a slightly depressing, but nonetheless funny note:

Anatomy of a Greenwash from Paul Scheer

I love satire, but I love informed satire even more.