Fiascos in Sustainability
Robert Menard
Certified Purchasing Professional,
Certified Professional Purchasing Consultant, Certified Green Purchasing Professional, Certified Professional Purchasing Manager
What do these names in the news have in common – Fisker and Solyndra? Yes, they are all colossal blunders of a politically driven agenda that has no connection to sustainability. The falsely stated premise of the so called “green and clean” $80 Billion initiative was incompetently mounted and managed by the Obama administration and its crony capitalism conspirators.
Solyndra’s collapse, which should have surprised no one, left American taxpayers holding the bag for a stunning $535 million in federal guarantees. That is over a half a billion dollars for a thoroughly ill-conceived fanciful and foolish foray into solar power. Solyndra is but one of many more quixotic dalliances committed thus far.
The Fisker folly, according to Associated Press reports, will cost the American taxpayers $139 million. Even so, the Solyndra and Fisker sins shrink to insignificance compared to the mind numbing $9B – $12B loss the American tax payers must pay for the GM fiasco.
It could be argued that Solyndra had a tangential, if ephemeral, contact with sustainability, there is absolutely no such argument for Fisker, the electric vehicle manufacturer. The simple fact is that an all-electric vehicle is not sustainable by any measure. Setting aside the environmental damage done by battery manufactures and the pollution created in the countries that disregard the planet’s future, the absolute inanity is that the vehicle is fueled by electricity, the least efficient of all major fuels. For the most part, the electricity is created by high GHG emitting power generation plants, mostly coal (the bane of so-called “environmentalists) and natural gas, and then wastefully transformed to lower voltages.
And before we depart the world of the surreal, let’s give honorable mention to the incompetent martinets in the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division that extorted a $1 million settlement from Duke Energy Renewables. Duke was apparently responsible for the death of 14 eagles and 149 other birds between 2009 and 2013 at two of its windmill farms in Wyoming under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Well, very little has change in +/- one hundred years so why not penalize Duke Renewables for trying to do the Obama administration’s bidding.
Should the same bureaucrats also fine Sully Sullenberger and US Airways for chewing up waterfowl in the jet engines upon take off from La Guardia and then polluting the Hudson with their remains?