Finally, a thoughtful contribution to discussions about the environment . . .

. . . from Depleted Cranium: Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn.

I get so tired of there being no reasonable, middle ground on environmental issues.

This looks to me like it could start some productive dialogues.

As a tease, here's number three:

3. Depending on continuous heavy subsidies is not sustainable. – Subsidies exist for a reason and are not always a completely bad thing. They are designed to do things like maintain a strategic capability which is not normally profitable or to stimulate a sector which is important to a country and might now develop on it’s own.

However, when it comes to energy and development, a subsidy cannot be a tow-line, but only a jump start. In other words, it must be for the purpose of establishing a capability which will have value and returns on the initial expenditure. Paying to keep something going for years when it has shown disappointing results is a complete waste. It is not economically sustainable and has low benefit.

It also should be pointed out that “creating jobs” is not an economic benefit if those jobs are entirely based on expenditures which do not result in a tangible payback and rely on direct funding to exist. “Creating 1000 jobs” is not a good thing if the way they were created is by paying 1000 people to do something useless. The sustainability and overall effect must be considered.

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A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

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