ATW QOTD
By Pete Moore On March 14th, 2011 at 7:40 pmFrom various places, including samizdata (my emphasis):
I have worked in government for 28 years as an economist, and for the last 20 years I have worked on environmental programs. In that time I have not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming, let alone man made global warming and I have not seen a shred of evidence that there is going to be a green economic boom. The only evidence I have seen is that there is a green economic bust, that money invested in green technologies is usually wasted and simply consumes investment that could be better used elsewhere. I think that anybody in government or industry who can not understand this is either dishonest, stupid, or both. That applies to Cameron – I think he is both.
I think so too. As plain as it is that all government spending (including “green” subsidies) is not productive spending but consumption, that it diminishes economic growth and cannot possibly stimulate production is clear, still a belief in the opposite pervades. This is no dry, academic debate. Economic voodoo has consequences which hit us all:
A study of renewable energy in Scotland shows that for every job created in the alternative energy sector, almost four jobs are lost in the rest of the economy.
That’s in addition to Spanish and German studies which show similar results. Each and every time someone calls for “green” subsidies into renewables they are calling for the government to destroy productive jobs by sucking wealth from the economy. It’s time to point and laugh at these idiots whenever they do so.