A Gold Rush of Subsidies in the Search for Clean Energy

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/business/energy-environment/a-cornucopia-of-help-for-renewable-energy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 8:03 AM
Subject: re: A Gold Rush of Subsidies in the Search for Clean Energy
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
   American energy policy is stuck in a quagmire of words. When the public eats the cost of mercury in the atmosphere or acid rain or anthropogenic climate change, that's not charged to coal-fired electricity generation. Those are "externalities". But when the public eats the cost of starting up a renewable energy sector that's called "subsidies" and the clamor is predictable. Coal is only "cheap" because we have never tallied its real cost. If our energy policy is going to be a matter of reasoning, rather than partisan sniping, it will have to start with tallying real costs for all the options. Put a price on ocean acidification and global climate change and mercury in the atmosphere and fouled groundwater and 10,000yr safe storage of radioactive wastes and fisheries disrupted. Only then can we make rational choices about our energy future. Solar and wind might look more attractive if we kept honest books.
Barry Haskell Levine