The Left’s Green Crony Capitalism

Conn Carroll / October 27, 2009

Newsweek‘s Stefan Theil reports from Berlin:

Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. … It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve.

Politico reports from DC:

House Democrats are using an annual spending bill to exempt home state interests from new environmental rules which the party typically supports.

At issue is the treatment of Great Lakes freight vessels impacted by proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations designed to reduce harmful emissions. The rules are scheduled to take effect in December, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) appeared Monday night to have won an exemption for at least 13 older U.S. vessels threatened by the regulations.