[Prrometheus]

What change? We have a trillion dollar pork bill getting bludgeoned through congress right now. Essentially the President said to congress "Just make it big, and make sure we have some token expenditures on energy subsidies. Otherwise, here's the checkbook. Yes, there's more than a thousand economists against this, but we're going to ignore them and listen to the ones who are Democrats."

So far, the new boss looks a lot like the old ones, except being black, young, and charismatic. plus ca change...

Also, sustainable energy is an engineering problem (unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't). No amount of Presidential hope-rays is going to make windmills or solar cells more efficient.

Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state.

Yes, I do hope he's marginally better than what came before. But this attitude that "I hope he's the one to make change stick", I just don't understand. There's only so much change you can make atop the world's largest bureaucracy.

[ewiethoff]

> Rest assured, however, that we will give more money to corn farmers for ethanol, despite the fact that it is neither environmentally or economically sound as an energy source. Obama comes from a corn state.

Cue the Corn Cartel. Did you know you can use corn syrup to melt snow and ice on roads? No need for salt. No more salt-induced auto body rust. All praise for corn.

But seriously, now. I do hope corn ethanol does not get promoted.

[FlorinAndrei]

> unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't

Oh wow, stereotyping much?

[jacoblyles]

Most of the green lobby is opposed to nuclear, and the "alternative energy" push is largely a project of the green lobby.

Show me an example of where Obama and the Democrats (excellent name for a rock band) have promised anywhere near as much money for nuclear development as they have for "sexy" and ineffective tech like solar, wind, and biofeuls.

So much for "do what works".

[madmanslitany]

Isn't Steven Chu, Obama's new Secretary of Energy, pro-nuclear?

From: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=reactivating-nuclear-rea...

"Nuclear power, as I said before, is going to be an important part of our energy mix," said physicist Steven Chu, Obama's secretary of energy during his confirmation hearing on January 14. "It's 20 percent of our electricity generation today, but it is 70 percent of the carbon-free portion of electricity today. And it is baseload. So I think it is very important that we push ahead." He added: "There is certainly a changing mood in the country because nuclear is carbon-free, that we should look at it with new eyes."

[jacoblyles]

With the money in the stimulus bill, they could have replaced 20% of the nation's electrical capacity with nuclear (a million megawatts of national capacity, $5 billion for 1,200 megawatts of nuclear power, round down a bit to make the math easier). I doubt the actual bill goes towards anything so useful. I'm not sure what is actually in the slop bucket, but I have heard that some will go towards subsidies for rather useless, but sexy, green tech.

If they believe in nuclear, they could put their money where their mouth is.

[anewaccountname]

>unless by "sustainable energy" we mean proven technologies like nuclear, which leftists inevitably don't

Yeah, proven to need billions of dollars on a Government subsidy to limit liability to 10 billion dollars, no matter how much the plant makes, and no matter how much damage it does (wipe out a state? that's ok, 10 billion should cover that).