Clean Waste

In choosing Nobelist and alternative energy enthusiast Steve Chu as his nominee to head the Department of Energy (DOE), President-elect Barack Obama is saying he is serious about his plan to invest an awful lot of taxpayer money in alternative "clean" energy schemes. At an international climate summit in November, Obama proposed spending $150 billion over 10 years. Two days later, California Senator Barbara Boxer announced that she will introduce a bill in Congress to spend $15 billion a year "to spur innovations in clean energy." Obama says huge government investment in wind and solar power and other alternative energy technologies can usher in a "new chapter" of clean energy in America. It's a nice, sunny notion — really! — but first he ought to acquaint himself with the old chapters of this sad saga. The problem with most discussions about clean energy is that they take place in an ahistorical, highly naive vacuum. The next big breakthrough is always said to be just around the corner. Investors are too shortsighted to see it, but if government would just pitch in, why, we'd all be driving a fleet of Prius-like vehicles by 2020 — powered by nothing but our own self-esteem, with emissions that will actually reverse global warming. Where's the downside? The downside is in falling for it. America's real history of investing in non-nuclear clean energy is a story of waste and harm on a massive scale....