Solar Panel Tariffs

[Aggie]

So.. the US could let its citizens have solar panels that are cheap enough to compete with other forms of energy, but instead it slaps protectionist tariffs on Chinese solar panels:

http://inhabitat.com/solar-prices-expected-to-rise-as-us-places-huge-tariffs-on-chinese-produced-pv-cells/

Way to tax solar energy, guys!  Everyone in the world will have solar energy cheaper than in the US.

[Roland Deschain]

So why don't the US government just subsidise their own manufacturers? Do they really have to be world leaders in every field just to feel important? I bet the oil companies love this move.

[Sibling DavidH]

In the UK, up to very recently, householders were paid ridiculously high rates for their surplus energy generated by solar panels, so a lot of people were having them fitted.  Then, with very little warning, those rates were slashed by the government.  Now a lot fewer people are having them fitted, and the government is about to cut the rates even further.

Same kind of thinking by the two governments, essentially.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2089014/Government-half-solar-panel-Feed-Tariff-returns-March-loses-court-battle.html

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-2149323/Solar-panel-returns-cut-leaving-just-weeks-grab-10-returns--Feed-Tariffs.html

[Swatopluk]

Not to forget that solar cuts into oil and gas profits.
Doubly so, by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and by competing for subsidies.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Wait a sec, are you suggesting that politicians are short sighted and thinking only in the short term? 

[Griffin NoName]

Politicians should be  carbon-taxed.

[Sibling DavidH]

I can think of more creative ways of dealing with them. 

[Swatopluk]

Wait a sec, are you suggesting that politicians are short sighted and thinking only in the short term? 

Since too much sex leads to shortsightedness (or so our elders taught) and politicians are notoriously involved in sex scandals that has to be expected.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Politicians should be  carbon-taxed.

Would that be an emmissive tax?  In that you'd measure the hot-exhaust of your typical politician (and tax that)?

Or would you measure the total carbon footprint his (or her) body removes from the environment (simply by being alive)?   For many of these fat-cats, that would be the larger of the two-- for to be honest, you must consider both the size of their egos and the size of their heads... as they perceive themselves, naturally.

Or, perhaps, we could tax them based on how much dead-tree product they cause to be used by their normal political function-- including all the endless wasted political ads they send in the guise of pretending to tell us how they are doing...

... hmmm.

Hard to gauge which would be more effective.

[Roland Deschain]

I think they should be taxed on emissions. All that BS must produce at least some methane.