Green No More - comments on money down a rathole

This came into my email box this morning, sent by a friend whom I respect, even when we differ, as we often do.

"A Salinas car manufacturing company that was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs folded before almost any vehicles could run off the assembly line.

The city of Salinas had invested more than half a million dollars in Green Vehicles, an electric car start-up company.

All of that money is now gone, according to Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan.
.....
http://www.ksbw.com/r/28586219/detail.html"

Here is what my friend commented:

"More proof that the government has no business in attempting to manage business.  This is just another 'Green' program that was pushed down taxpayers' throats by a government that has no idea what the hell is going on.  While we are developing the technology to someday make vehicles like this affordable, we are still a long way off.  Rather than allow these industries to grow and develop at their own pace, Obama and his lemming supporters think they can force a workable technology on us before its time.  More tax $$ down the rathole of environmentalism..  These $$ should be paid back out of the personal $$ stash of every bureaucrat and elected official who endorsed it and donated the peoples' $$ to it."

I responded by saying:

Not to speak too loudly in defense of government involvement in what might better be strictly non-government business, the push to develop green alternatives to the fossil-fuel-based automobile is certainly nothing new. Oh, maybe the specifics are new, but the principle -- government investment in beneficial ideas -- is certainly not. After all, the idea of pushing a railroad across the nation, linking east and west coasts with a band of iron might have been allowed to develop at its own pace, unaided by the federal government. Right or wrong, the government saw that there was merit to a transcontinental railroad and threw their full weight behind assisting the private-sector undertaking. And, to be sure, I know that individuals both in and out of government made bundles on the deal. But we got a transcontinental railroad out of the deal, which wasn't a bad thing.

While electric cars may not be ready to replace the rather inefficient petrol-based cars that are common today, they aren't exactly a new idea. They are a return or look back to one of the several technologies that once provided power to what came to be automobiles but was not developed because the petroleum-fueled internal combustion engine seemed the better idea, or got the push to take the lead over electric and steam.

There may be something to gain from supporting alternative-fuel research on a short-term, personal basis. Read that as corruption. But I think that the longer term possibilities are good. Investing in the future, even investing public money in it, is not some new-fanged idea of Obama's nor of Al Gore's. We've been doing it for some time, including a ton of money poured into research and development in military defense and the aerospace industry. Both areas have provided jobs and a lot of spin-off products that have become everyday items.

Salinas thought it was investing in not only the future of automobiles, but in the future of Salinas, an area that could use some economic diversity and a shot in the arm. Steinbeck country is almost wholly agricultural and that agriculture is dependent on artificial means to keep going. I'm sure that some politicians might have made a buck or two on the deal, but I also think the investment in our national future as well as the future of Salinas was in there and maybe even at the front of many people's thinking.

Now, I consider myself a small "l" libertarian" with strong suspicions about big government that are pretty much balanced by suspicions about big business and its influence on government. So, I don't rush to condemn every move made by government that I can see was motivated by some concern for the common good. I think this is one such situation. I believe in a lot of the sentiments of the green movement, while not entirely trusting some of it or, perhaps more accurately, some of the people involved in it. Perhaps it is because so many of them see government control as the first and best option in moving toward a greener world. That's not my style, although I can see that some help from the government could move the process along toward a positive conclusion more quickly than allowing strictly market forces to do it.

I welcome your comments on this.