According to Mother Jones in their May-June 2008 issue, our fight for energy “independence” is a losing proposition. Here are some great stats pulled from the article “The seven Myths of Energy Independence” by Paul Roberts.
I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the article, but I do agree that I don’t think the US will ever see energy “independence” in my lifetime. Some of these tables and charts show some interesting figures.
Check out another informative table here.
Federal Funding for Renewable-Energy R&D
$ millions, in 2005 dollars
Seeing Green
Where the clean-energy money is—and isn’t
Dept. of Energy solar budget, 2008: $168 million
Venture capital investment in solar, 2006: $264 million
Dept. of Energy renewable-energy budget, 2008:$1.7 billion
Venture capital investment in renewable energy, 2006: $2.4 billion
Federal ethanol subsidies, 2006: $6 billion
Federal coal subsidies, 2006: $8 billion
Federal oil and gas subsidies, 2006: $39 billion
Worldwide investment in renewable energy, 2007:$71 billion
How in the heck can we expect energy change when our federal oil and gas subsidies out spend the worldwide investment in renewable energy???
1 Comment
April 30, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Good post, Bluedahlia. Kinda makes you sick to see it laid out like that, huh?
As long as we have oil men and/or Republicans in charge, nothing will be done. Absolutely nothing.