http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/01/renewable_energ.html#comment-28654412

"Who is going to pay..?"

Wrong question.

Who should pay for renewable energy? That's the right question.

Right now big energy monopolies, especially multinational oil companies, are getting huge subsidies from taxpayers and also from consumers in the form of maniplulated pricing.

The cost for these recent oil wars are being charged to future taxpayers, the record national debt built up on money borrowed mainly from China.

So it's pretty obvious where the money to invest in renewables ought to come from.

Right out of these subsidies for energy corporations, the obvious ones, like that 8 billion dollar oil lease giveaway from the bush administration, and the hidden ones like the war on Iraq.

1.2 trillion is the bill for Iraq so far, that would have provided a lot of tax credits to consumers to invest in renewable energy, plugin cars, and conservation.

The money that is essentially stolen now,by corporate lobbying, from taxpayers using lies and bribery, ought to go to pay for renewable energy.

In fact that is the push right now from this new congress, take subsidies away from energy corporations and divert them to pay for renewables. End the war on Iraq. How long will it take lobbyists to squelch these efforts?

Not too long if media like the NYT divert attention from reform with op/ed pieces like this one. The next op/ed piece after this one?

"Renewable energy can't be funded because it is just too costly."

Buy the false premise and they will lead us right down the garden path to that wrongheaded conclusion.

When in reality driving a plugin car that runs on (the equivalent cost to 75 cent per gallon gas) electricity actually saves consumers money, it doesn't cost more, it costs less.

Ending oil wars actually saves trillions, it does not cost more.

Solar heating and conservation reduce energy bills and pay their own way, they do not cost more.

Wind power is the lowest cost baseload power source, it does not cost more.

Renewable energy will revive the US manufacturing base that multinational corporations and high energy prices have killed. And so forth.

What can one expect from mass (delusional) media? Conventional wisdom, propaganda for corporations that run government with lobbying. That's what the New York Times has produced once again.