Renewable energy spending unjustified

Tom Keller, Henderson

Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008 | 2:03 a.m.

Bill Clinton’s pep talk on green energy, reported on in Tuesday’s Las Vegas Sun, pitched government subsidies to support the building of industries that are not mature enough to be economically justified.

Our politicians have ignored our oil supply problem for 30 years, and their dogged refusal to open up development of the most likely new supplies in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offshore has come back to bite them with an oil crisis. Because there is little they can do other than open up drilling, they are now proposing to spend untold billions on unnecessary renewable energy to make it look as if they are doing something.

This would be very bad policy, and would do nothing to solve the oil crisis. What it would do is create another very expensive government-subsidized program similar to the failed ethanol program that has caused food prices to skyrocket. Larger deficits and more inflation are not what this country needs.