Experts talk about the fight against the green economy

The natural consequence to change is opposition, and that is exactly what the green industry is receiving from institutions that have been in place for well over a hundred years.

Change rarely comes easily, and according to Dr. Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the changes required to stop and reverse climate change will be a daunting challenge.

Although the green industry is blossoming into what may become the new status quo for energy consumption and business ethics, it is being met with enormous resistance and hostility from big oil, coal, chemical production, and a laundry list of others.

The industry is also finding out that one of the biggest challenges to getting the green collar economy up and running is finding investors and persuading banks to take the plunge into renewables.

Unfortunately, to overcome these challenges in global money markets requires a change in the institutional practices and laws that govern them, which is clearly not being well received.

“In fairness, we should concede that the greedy bankers have a point. Their task is to maximize profit and market share, in fact that’s their legal obligation,” wrote Chomsky in an email interview. “If they don’t do it, they’ll be replaced by someone who will. These are institutional facts.”

The money generated by old, environmentally damaging methods of energy production and manufacturing have, up until recently, been doing a great job of maximizing profit and market share.

“Inherent market inefficiencies require them [bankers] to ignore systemic risk,” wrote Chomsky. “They know full well that this oversight is likely to tank the economy, but such externalities are not their business, and cannot be, for institutional reasons. Anglo-American corporate law requires managers to maximize shareholder profit, whatever the consequences for others.”

Even though this externality must be ignored by big business, it cannot be for much longer.

PV installations, for instance, rose 115 percent in 2010 in the midst of a terrible economy, and prices for PV continue to fall in the face of booming demand. That speaks to the maturity and efficiency of the supply chain,” said Seth Masia, Deputy Editor of SOLAR TODAY.

But, this is only one side of the coin.

“The same is true of the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and the rest of the business leaders who are running a massive propaganda campaign to convince the public to dismiss concerns about global warming, with great success; those who believe in this liberal hoax have reduced to barely a third of the population,” wrote Chomsky. “The executives dedicated to this task know as well as the rest of us that the liberal hoax is real, and the prospects grim. But they are fulfilling their institutional role. The fate of the species is an externality that they must ignore, to the extent that market systems prevail.”

However, the propaganda war isn’t being waged well.

Masia notes that even the hostility toward renewables is grounded in reality,

“From the perspective of the solar industry (and renewable energy technologies generally), we’re very conscious of and concerned about the persistent message sold by the fossil fuel industry that ‘Yes, we need renewable energy . . . someday. But it won’t be ready for years,’ he said. “In the market, with or without federal subsidies, renewables have won the battle. In Taiwan this week, spot prices for silicon solar modules dropped to $1.15 per watt, down from about $2.25 a year ago.”

Cathy Zoi, U.S. Department of Energy's assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, simply added, “At $1 per watt, we win.”

Photo: Randy Montoya.