Deeper In Red From Going Green

IBD Editorials ^ | April 15, 2009

[Kaslin]

Recession: The administration tells the country it can revive the economy with a "green" stimulus. But, like government-provided universal health care, where it's been tried in another nation, it hasn't worked.

---

Washington has been in a lather about restoring the economy by greening it through an ambitious renewable energy program since before Barack Obama took office. The fever has only become hotter since his inauguration.

Obama's 2010 budget includes roughly $20 billion in tax incentives to stimulate clean-energy programs. He has promised to create 5 million green-collar jobs over the next decade.

Four days before taking office, while conditioning the country for what's to come, he talked about nations that are "making real investments in renewable energy . . . surging ahead of us, poised to take the lead in these new (green) industries."

Outside of Washington, an e-mail campaign from supposedly average Americans supporting Obama's green economy initiatives recently swamped our mailbox. The Associated Press has reported that "community colleges across the country are reporting a surge of unemployed workers enrolling in courses that offer training for 'green-collar' jobs."

Those who finish their courses might go to work installing solar panels or building windmills (while the administration tilts at them in the name of economic recovery).

But for every one that is hired for a green job, he or she will displace several already at work. That's no stimulus. That's not a gale of creative destruction. That's the road to a depression.

[GeronL]

doesn’t wind and solar energy cost ten or twenty times more than coal?

[arthurus]

“Creating” 5 million green jobs while eliminating 20 million real jobs and making power and everything else so expensive that 75% of Americans are reduced to bare subsistence or worse. The government cannot put everyone on welfare if no one is creating wealth to feed into the system.