Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Blog

Solyndra and the blah, blah, blah syndrome

By James M. Connolly

The questions floating around the nation’s capital center on whether the Obama Administration rushed reviewers to judgment on the government loan to now-failed solar company Solyndra, and whether the president’s team tried to make political hay in the cleantech community by propping up a company with a questionable future.

Umm, on point one, sounds like it. On point two, absolutely.

Oh, one more question: Are the president’s opponents latching onto the Solyndra issue to advance their own political agenda, which includes opposing anything Obama, anything relating to government spending, and anything having to do with cleantech? The fact that Republicans spent seven months building a case against the Solyndra loan, even before the company filed for bankruptcy, provides us with a definite yes.

The real question to be answered with pure honesty is how we have sunk to a level where our leaders on both sides of the aisle have politicized matters such as energy and pollution to the point where it’s facts-be-damned, we’re moving ahead.

The victims here are the U.S. economy at large and the individual citizen who sees dollars pulled out of one pocket for taxes, and dollars for energy yanked from another.

Whichever side you come down on regarding the stimulus bill and other federal initiatives, you have to acknowledge that some of the spending has the potential to create long-term jobs and ease our reliance on foreign oil, and some was just plain wasted, whether on poorly chosen recipient companies or foolish capital projects that provided nothing but a short-term boost in jobs. (I logged about 400 miles of travel in northern New England over the weekend, and was left to wonder why certain highways got a fresh layer of paving that they never needed while in other places bridges were falling down without the assistance of a hurricane. Pork barrel spending in Republican states? Shocking!)

The Solyndra mess now sets us up for another round of blah, blah, blah. The green-everything-tax-the-rich side will seek justification in Obama’s haste. The nuke-the-whales-global-warming-is-a-commie-lie crowd will use it to block any green initiatives.

Energy — whether we are talking about sustainable sources, new sources for carbon fuels or energy management — isn’t a political game. It’s about our lives, and the quality of life for our children and grandchildren. It’s time to look at energy issues on their merits, not on their political value.