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The Cleantech Crash on 60 Minutes


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the-cleantech-crash-on-60-minutes.phpPower Line:

Steven Hayward

1/6/14

 

“60 Minutes,” not exactly a fan of Power Line’s way of thought (heh), did a belated public service last night with a segment on “The Cleantech Crash,” noting that taxpayers had shelled out billions for stupid “green” energy boondoggles. Silicon Valley legend Vinod Khosla comes in for especially heavy weather, along with a bureaucratic wunderkind who said “Who-me?”

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

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http://youtu.be/VHlE2FHY__E

 

 

Gosh....if only someone had said something!....rolleyes.gif


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Sacred Cows Skewered: Left Goes to DefCon1

 

I have a friend who once got a fairly conservative documentary about religious liberty broadcast nationally on PBS. Naturally the left got mad, and flooded online fora with indignant complaints wondering how such a program got on our network.

 

So naturally when 60 Minutes departs from the script, as it did last night with The Cleantech Crash, it was not a surprise to find out today that the left is upset. Take it away, Puffington Host:

 

 

A recent 60 Minutes segment is drawing sharp criticism for its pessimistic take on the green technology sector, which questioned whether clean tech has become a dirty word. . . .

 

One of the biggest issues with the segment, critics charge, is that it conflated the Silicon Valley clean tech venture capital scene with the Department of Energys loan guarantee program for renewable energy.

Maybe they were conflated because the two realms were joined at the hip, by the explicit design of the Obama Administration. But to continue with the latest primal scream from the Green Weenies:

 

(Snip)

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Uncle Sam Is No Venture Capitalist

 

On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran a segment highlighting recent struggles in the field of renewable technologies. The piece was, as one might glean upon reading its title, highly critical of the industrys failures, and of our governments role in funding some of these high-profile flops.

 

 

(Snip)

 

ut heres the rub: the federal government has been on the hook for a lot of these failures. Stahl rattles off a depressingly long string of failed cleantech companies (many of which will be familiar to our readers) that received substantial government backing. Again, that these firms failed isnt the distressing part. But Uncle Sam shouldnt be playing the role of venture capitalist, gambling on the implementation of nascent technologies by picking winners and losers. The risk of picking wrong is, as weve seen in Solyndra and Fisker, very high, as is the risk of crony capitalism.

 

Rather than directly funding companies looking to peddle cleantech, we should be funneling taxpayer money towards the research and development of the technologies that undergird the industry. In other words, we should be developing more efficient solar panels, rather than investing in a company that produces panels based on current-generation technology.

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