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Originally Posted by cellsafemode
Same place corn farmers / ethanol producers sign up for their subsidies on making their corn into ethanol. Something tax payers have been paying for for the past 30 years to the tune of way more (definitely) billions than solar / electric has been given the past decade they've been available to purchase.
Or you could get into the oil business which gets around 17 billion subsidized per year.
Subsidies are everywhere it's part of the job governments have. It's good to at least see it in an industry that needs it to start so that it can replace what we currently are running out of. Waiting until it's needed is too late.
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Oil subsidies help us compete against a cartel. Oil has a demonstrated efficiency.
I'm not opposed to EV subsidies, they encourage innovation. Same with CAFE standards. I'm driving a 455hp V8 that gets 30mpg and will run circles around anything ever produced when similar HP cars got 10mpg (my first hot rod was a '70 Judge).
But wind/solar, even if optimized to hypothetical limits, will never be as efficient as petroleum, nor will they make a significant dent on energy needs. So the subsidies go to an ideological pipe dream. Currently, they have shown little innovation and a lot of bankruptcy. Edit: and a lot of dead endangered birds around wind mill farms.
And I am firmly opposed not only to food-based ethanol subsidies, but also to their use. It does nothing for the climate, causes food prices to rise in the Third World (revolutions have been fought over less), is less efficient, and has led to clear-cutting of rain forests as farmers go where the profit is. Burning food for fuel is about the dumbest idea of this generation.
I am not opposed to non-food ethanol/bio fuels. E.g. cellulosic - Georgia is exploring using Pine trees, which are renewable here, and harvesting Pine is not like clear-cutting rain or old growth forests.
Maybe I could put a nuclear reactor in my SS.
Padre