{"id":7689,"date":"2012-05-06T10:41:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T17:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=7689"},"modified":"2012-05-06T10:41:36","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T17:41:36","slug":"the-republican-war-on-green-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/06\/the-republican-war-on-green-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Republican War on Green Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although Barack Obama leaves a lot to be desired on his overall energy policy, he has made more progress in the development of green energy sources.  That progress is now at risk, and will probably be suspended, because Republicans intend to cut off the subsidies that has fueled it, while refusing to end the much larger subsidies for dirty energy.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"6green-energy\"The federal government has given generously to the clean energy industry over the last few years, funneling billions of dollars in grants, loans and tax breaks to renewable power sources like wind and solar, biofuels and electric vehicles. \u201cClean tech\u201d has been good in return.<\/p>\n

During the recession, it was one of the few sectors to add jobs. Costs of wind turbines and solar cells have fallen over the last five years, electricity from renewables has more than doubled, construction is under way on the country\u2019s first new nuclear power plant in decades. And the United States remains an important player in the global clean energy market. <\/p>\n

Yet this productive relationship is in peril, mainly because federal funding is about to drop off a cliff and the Republican wrecking crew in the House remains generally hostile to programs that threaten the hegemony of the oil and gas interests<\/strong>. The clean energy incentives provided by President Obama\u2019s 2009 stimulus bill are coming to an end, while other longer-standing subsidies are expiring. <\/p>\n

If nothing changes, clean energy funding will drop from a peak of $44.3 billion in 2009 to $16 billion this year and $11 billion in 2014 \u2014 a 75 percent decline<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Sadly, there is virtually nothing we can do to stop this loss of green support in the short term.  In 2010, the Teabaggers were energized, while way too many on the left either stayed home or cast protest votes for third parties.  Now we all get to pay the price for their folly.  The only way we can restore the funding in the long term is to elect Democrats (with few exceptions) and keep Obama in the White House.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although Barack Obama leaves a lot to be desired on his overall energy policy, he has made more progress in the development of green energy sources.  That progress is now at risk, and will probably be suspended, because Republicans intend to cut off the subsidies that has fueled it, while refusing to end the much […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}