Energy Debate

Debate: Clean Energy Can Drive America's Economic Recovery (iq2us.org) from Intelligence Squared US on Vimeo.

Bottom line for me: innovations are possible in solar panels, ethanol production, bio-fuels, and maybe even wind energy, but you don't learn how to make those things more efficient by subsidizing their inefficient versions. We know how to make non-cost efficient solar panels already. Quadrupling our production of a bad idea does not make it a good idea.

So I'm all for research. Do some. But don't tax me in order to subsidize a wind mill that will be raining fiery aluminum down on my head in five years. Thomas Jefferson opposed taxes that "are likely to cause giant fan blades to go cartwheeling across the countryside." I believe George Washington and John Adams felt the same.