Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greets audiences following a televised town hall event on the Green New Deal in New York on March 29. By Ryan Driskell Tate Ryan Driskell Tate is a Ph.D. candidate in American history at Rutgers University, completing a book on energy development in the American West. April 26 Last month, President Trump mocked the Green New Deal in his most ornery criticism of the project to date, calling the proposal “preposterous” and a “central planning disaster.
The nation’s energy sector has never functioned as a capitalist “free market.” In fact, the pervasive use of fossil fuels today is the product of corporate-friendly policies through which the government has subsidized the industry and performed the spadework for its expansion.
The coal companies counted on the National Guard to break strikes, suppress labor conflict and maintain the smooth and uninterrupted flow of their commodities. Federal and state politicians granted energy companies the right of way on private estates and opened public lands for mineral companies to stake their claims. The nation’s energy firms even expanded their holdings abroad and created the “strategic” need for U.S. foreign policy to align with the protection of mineral resources overseas .
Congress passed the Connally Hot Oil Act of 1935 only after major oil firms begged the government to protect them from the hard-edge of the free market. This new law instituted government sanctions that pro-rationed surpluses to keep prices from falling and shielded inefficient producers.
Trump’s presidency has shred whatever subtly there once was to the old ruse. He has told fossil-fuel interests that their “full potential can only be realized when government promotes energy development” and promised to “eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before.
Right, because learning from our mistakes doesn't feel very good.
It already does
Or subsidies for neither! How about stay out of the damn way?
Somehow we survived w/o oil before it became our God. No reason we can't take a bite of socialism w/o eating the whole cake. The oil giants would like us to believe alternatives are too expensive & unreliable, most things are in the beginning just like oil was.
How many billions of dollars did BarackObama steal from taxpayers to subsidize green projects? Almost every one of them failed & the biggest companies filed bankruptcy! Some of them were already closing & that traitor gave them millions anyway!
When you say the federal gov't, you mean taxpayers. It's taxpayers' $. The fed gov't doesn't subsidize anything, taxpayers do. I think the gov't & corrupt news outlets should quit expecting taxpayers to subsidize anything! Let the free market work! You're encouraging socialism!
Stop labeling pure opinion as “perspective”
SocialismSucks
Stupid pretend science to make green companies rich. Electricity that is produced by solar and wind doesn't pay for itself.
Perspective: Nuclear is the energy economy
The federal government should subsidize your hoaxes? All righty then
Nationalize the power grid Build a fleet of nuclear plants using one or two standard reactor designs That would do a lot.
Agree, but at the right pace
Absolutely and the collapsing cost of renewable energy technology makes it a sure bet