In order to get (more) independent from foreign energy sources, both politicians and companies often proposed the expansion of the "green" energy sector and the providing of more funding for research and development. However, big companies - who should be among the most important recipients of such a policy - are obviously getting more and more frustrated over policy gridlock in this field.
According to this article, companies like Microsoft, who are (for whatever reason ... it would also be really interesting to discuss this, but of course it is not our topic) interested in furthering the development of "green" energy or at least inclined to participate in the research process, are threatening to "abandon" Washington D.C. due to the overwhelming influence of the fossil-fuel industry on the decision-makers.
The article claims that Washington is "broken" with regards to environmental policy, a claim that we have often heard and discussed in our class. I think that this development is a conspicuous example of a lot of problems we have discussed, as we are confronted with lobbyism by powerful stakeholders resulting in gridlock with the consequence that important decisions are not made.
I would be really interested in how people who think that gridlock is actually only "the Constitution working as it has been intended" defend such a development, in which money clearly is used to prevent necessary and important policy changes.
A blog and event series led by Professors David Schanzer and Don Taylor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy
While I am all for green energy and the great implications a green society are there is one very large obstacle. Currently we are just trying to improve technology that we already have and nottrying to invent new ways of harvesting green energy. There is only so much power that a photosynthetic panel can produce from being in the sun. Also the cost in itself not only for the research into finally finding such a solution but the cost of completely changing how our society functions is going to be a long and expensive task. At this point it does not seem efficient to research into green energy because the costs of it still outweigh the benefits till we can find more efficient methods of harvesting natural energy or decide to go nuclear and finally locate somewhere to locate all of the radioactive waste.
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