Who could fault government grants to foster research into clean energy technology?
http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/92/2009/december/04/feds-give-clean-coal-projects-979m.html
Me actually.
Subsidies and grants of this nature do indeed create an environment of corporate innovation and discovery. Unfortunately, companies tend to use the money to discover increasingly innovative ways to harvest yet more money from taxpayers' pockets.
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3 comments:
Too bloody true.
If you want a particular authority for your power play, just brief a lawyer or a scientist and pay the proper fee!
Oh, or an economist!
The govt is to allocate 150 odd million to home insulation grants. Now I am not an economics expert but I'd like to think I understand the fundamentals. Is this not a case of us having to pay for others to upgrade their homes? It's limited so not everyone can avail and it's worth will vary from home to home. So it is basically unfair and inefficient.
The new carbon tax is being used to fund this. But what has improving home insulation got to do with climate change? Making a home more efficient, like attic insulation, does not automatically mean a reduction in co2, just co2 intensity. But we will only sort the Greenhouse effect with a move away from co2 production.
But even if it did fund say solar panels, the public still pays for something we don't all receive.
People should be made to fund the 'retro-fitting' themselves because in the classical liberal tradition, individuals are more efficient at allocation resources than govts.
That's my opinion but I sincerely doubt it will be raised in tomorrow's paper's unless perhaps that man Richard Tol pipes up.
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