Comments on: Jeffrey Sachs and Senator John Kerry on Energy http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/11/19/jeffrey-sachs-and-senator-john-kerry-on-energy/ Tapping experts in climate, geology, oceanography, ecology, sustainable development, global health, energy, food and water, State of the Planet captures stories of how the Earth works and how we can sustainably make our lives better. Mon, 20 May 2013 11:16:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: James Newberry http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/11/19/jeffrey-sachs-and-senator-john-kerry-on-energy/comment-page-1/#comment-3481 James Newberry Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:24:50 +0000 http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/?p=8749#comment-3481 The first step for transitioning to truly clean energy is to eliminate massive total direct and indirect fiscal and economic subsidies for mining of “fuels.” These “fuels” are the four horsemen of energy, climate and national insecurity (uranium, coal, petroleum and mined methane).

Government handouts, including tax expensing, are known as perverse economic subsidies because of their many damaging public impacts. They represent a failed policy of “cheap fuels.” If we want a price on mined substances that are contaminating, especially fossil carbon, then first stop subsidizing them. Otherwise the talk is just more economic fraud, which already seems pervasive enough thanks to (the oxymoron of) our investment banking “industry.”

]]> By: Craig Morris http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/11/19/jeffrey-sachs-and-senator-john-kerry-on-energy/comment-page-1/#comment-3303 Craig Morris Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:16:21 +0000 http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/?p=8749#comment-3303 Not only does Kerry not know what feed-in tariffs (the most successful policy for renewables all over the world) are, at around 5:30 minutes he claims that the United States “does not have a single photovoltaics manufacturer in the top 10.” In fact, the biggest firm in the world over the past few years was First Solar of the US:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/06/top-10-ten-largest-solar-pv-companies

And they only recently slipped to third place (behind to Chinese manufacturers) a few weeks ago:

http://www.solarnovus.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1600:first-solar-moving-to-third-place&catid=37:business-news&Itemid=241

This is the problem we face in the United States – because our politicians do not really have to compete with each other (google “political gerrymandering” – and don’t even get me started about Citizens…), you do not have to be more knowledgeable than Kerry.

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