Question by SPORTSLOVER: why should the government pay for alternative energy sources?
Best answer:
Answer by ithacanian07
Well first you should probably be made aware of the fact the government has and continues to heavily subsidize oil. I think the government should help pay for alternative energy sources because of this funny little thing that conservatives tend to ignore the existence of: market failures.
Unfortunately market forces alone will not make alternative energy viable until it’s far too late. We should have started an energy crash program years ago if we wanted to avoid the imminent liquid fuel shortages now just around the corner. We still have time to do this and only experience a relatively minor energy shortage. If we wait until this shortage actually arrives, however, we’ll probably experience at least 20 years of shortages that will destabilize the world economy and lead to strife and woe not seen since the second world war.
Some of the choices that the oil companies have been making recently pretty strongly support the peak oil theory, especially their refusal to increase refining capacity. You may be asking “Wait, I thought it was the tree hugging liberals that won’t let them increase refining capacity!”. Well, if so you would be mistaken. The oil companies have not been applying for refining licenses because they know that we will probably not be seeing any substantial increase in crude output and therefore have absolutely no desire to waste a bunch of their own money building refineries that won’t be of any use in about ten years or so.
If we’re going to see alternative energy become a viable option to avoid the calamity that the other end of the global oil production curve represents then the government is going to have to step in and subsidize these alternatives so that people will actually use them while they are still technically more expensive than fossil fuels.
Jeff M: You talk about the market as if it were a sentient being that always makes rational choices. It is not anywhere near this. Markets are the aggregate of the choices made by individuals that are influenced by the media, personal biases, self interest and literally innumerable other factors.
The fact that you deny that there are market failures indicates to me that you have a flawed understanding of basic economics.
What do you think? Answer below!
Tags:Alternative, energy, government, should, Sources
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