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No need to invoke hidden conspiracies trying to fight clean energy when the public conspiracies are sufficient explanation. Public Choice Thoery[1] says that w

No need to invoke hidden conspiracies trying to fight clean energy when the public conspiracies are sufficient explanation. Public Choice Thoery[1] says that when a potential regulation provides great benefit to a small group of people and a small detriment to everyone else it will tend to be adopted. The Solar Energy Industries Association's members and employees will vote against the reelection of politicians who allow their livelihood to be destroyed but the vast majority of the millions of people who see their electric bills go up won't even know why and those who do probably have issues they consider more important to base their votes on. Of course maybe the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy will be able to convince enough people that they should care to influence policy but the odds are stacked against them. Especially since the default is that we protect every industry against "unfair competition" unless a special exception is made. Maybe things will change under the next administration? You might remember Obama making a lot of noise about "green jobs" for Americans so a future Republican president might feel that American solar manufacturers are going to be against him no matter what and so remove the import barriers. But then again the people who care about lowering the barriers are also traditionally aligned against the Republicans so I'm not sure the politics works out. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> The Solar Energy Industries Association The people who make solar panels in the US are a preposterously small constituency. The thing to remember is that cheap Chinese solar panels don't just compete with less-cheap American solar panels, they also compete with oil, coal and every other source of generating electricity. Fossil fuel companies fight the construction of nuclear plants by claiming we should be building solar instead, because they know if they prevent nuclear then solar isn't cost competitive with fossil fuels. Then they make sure solar isn't cost competitive by doing things like this. And if that doesn't work they do what OPEC has been doing recently and increase production so that fossil fuel prices fall. It's not a "conspiracy" -- it's companies and OPEC-member governments acting in their own rational self-interest. (If you can call ignoring climate change rational.)

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> The Solar Energy Industries Association The people who make solar panels in the US are a preposterously small constituency. The thing to remember is that cheap Chinese solar panels don't just compete with less-cheap American solar panels, they also compete with oil, coal and every other source of generating electricity. Fossil fuel companies fight the construction of nuclear plants by claiming we should be building solar instead, because they know if they prevent nuclear then solar isn't cost competitive with fossil fuels. Then they make sure solar isn't cost competitive by doing things like this. And if that doesn't work they do what OPEC has been doing recently and increase production so that fossil fuel prices fall. It's not a "conspiracy" -- it's companies and OPEC-member governments acting in their own rational self-interest. (If you can call ignoring climate change rational.)