Liberals, if Obama subsidizes “green” technologies, who has no choice but to pay for it?

No offense, but the private sector has served us pretty terribly lately. They haven’t been watching out for our safety, and they’ve been squeezing the consumer and even their own employees in the interest of turning a profit for the shareholders and executives. GM and Ford had to be bailed out by the government because they utterly failed to respond to changing market forces, and pretty much all of our banks had to be bailed out and/or were exposed as practicing highly questionable ethics. Now we’ve got BP as a shining example of a corporation sacrificing safety in order to turn a profit.

It’s true that as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, green energy will become more profitable. However it’s also true that big businesses are often not good at responding to new market forces–they tend to carry a lot of inertia, and have both psychological and technological trouble adapting to new market forces, as we’ve seen with GM and Ford. There’s also the question of strategy–will oil companies switch to green tech, or will they decide to milk every cent from us until it is no longer feasible? The rising price of oil certainly hasn’t been treating consumers too well lately.

There are a lot of economic obstacles to green energy development that the government can help overcome. The single biggest factor inhibiting technological development is making the jump from research to application–we know how to do a ridiculous amount of stuff, but no one is willing to put in the money necessary to turn laboratory results into widespread commercial application. Green companies are also a fairly new thing. It’s not like they’re going to be equal players capable of outcompeting the oil industry on a level playing field.

So yes, taxpayers will be paying for green technology. But I suspect that with this, as with most things, everyone will complain about the cost but no one will complain about the results. We all want cheaper, cleaner energy that we don’t rely on other countries to produce. It’s just that nobody wants to personally foot the bill to get that done. We can wait around until we have no other choice, or we can start developing green tech now with taxpayer dollars to be prepared when the crisis hits. I see no reason to believe the free market will do the job effectively by itself.