Kerry Picket
Washington Times
6/15/2010
Senators John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Lieberman, Connecticut Independent, spoke about their climate change bill on Tuesday afternoon touting what they believe to be the benefits of pricing carbon. Republicans jumped at Democrats with the often cited Rahm Emanuel quote of “never letting a crisis go to waste,” implying the majority is being disingenuous for suggesting that taxing carbon gasses will somehow prevent oil spills in the future. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, called the Democrats’ tactic “inappropriate,” while Mr. Kerry branded his and Mr. Lieberman’s climate legislation as a “jobs” bill that would enhance national security.
Senator Kerry told reporters that “every study” shows that the subsidizing of alternative energy creates jobs, telling reporters on Tuesday, “We just told you that every study that has been made says that this creates hundreds of thousands of jobs a year,” he said. “Here we are in this month, and we just had 27,000 private sector jobs created. Do Americans want to say ‘no’ to anywhere from 250,000 to 540,000 jobs a year for the next ten, twenty years?”
However, according to a 2009 study from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain the subsidizing of renewable energy was a complete disaster. In fact, the study said that for every new job depending on energy price supports, at least 2.2 jobs in other industries will disappear. Bloomberg reported:
“The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power – – which are charged to consumers in their bills — translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.
‘The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,’ he said in an interview.”
I asked Senator Kerry about Spain’s own failed experience in the area of subsidizing alternative energy, and the Massachusetts Senator’s response sounded similar to someone saying Marxism or Stalinism never succeeded, because it was never implemented correctly. AUDIO
The article continues at the Washington Times.
