Recent comments

This article was about the reasons that America has fallen behind in “green” manufacturing. The basic premise is that the countries whose governments have provided the industry with support and incentives have pulled ahead. Nothing in this article supports the Chinese government’s policies on human rights or other issues, but it does recognize that Beijing (and much of Europe) has substantially subsidized its wind power industry. And China has pulled ahead of the U.S. in green manufacturing because of its government-led industrial policy, not by “bringing the real power of private ownership/enterprise, free-markets and competition back into play.” I will agree that “creativity and entrepeneurship . . . create job opportunities . . . when enterprise and ownership develop sufficiently to require helping hands” (paraphrasing from your second paragraph), and that is precisely what happened in America in the 1970s. U.S. entrepreneurs had invented wind turbines, and when the U.S. government recognized that domestically-produced energy served the national interest, provided “helping hands” in the form of subsidies and incentives to promote the nascent wind energy industry. It dropped those subsidies in the 1980s and our industry has since declined. In the U.S., climate change and energy policy would have provided an indirect way for the “free market” to come into play and might have promoted the development of a domestic wind energy industry. Regardless of how you feel about climate change, reducing American carbon emissions would have increased demand for wind energy, which would have compelled manufacturers to build plants near that demand. Even if you don’t buy climate change, domestically-produced renewable energy remains good for both America’s economy and national security, and energy legislation could have promoted wind energy manufacturing within U.S. borders. However, many Republicans refused to move away from our oil-based energy economy, particularly during Bush’s eight years in office. Taking all of this into account, it was particularly disingenuous for Republicans to express shock that incentivizing wind energy farms in 2010 necessitated importing wind turbines from abroad. Finally, the article mentioned “Buy America” provisions not to advocate for protectionist measures, but to point out the irony of Republicans accusing Democrats of sending jobs overseas, but not supporting the provision intended to prevent just that. Let me know if there is anything else to squawk about.