Newt Gingrich is an idiot 7

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1. 

   anotherID Posted 10:13 am
   13 Jan 2009

   Idealogy is blind?Blind commitment to a failed idealogy is painful.

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2. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 12:11 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   To be fairThis is probably a good reason why Hansen's Carbon Tax may just work. (Even though it is a "Tax".
   
   _
   Since "government" isn't left with any of the money.
   And because it "Let's the market innovate, rather than government picking winners".
   It also provides "Tax Credits" to large swaths of voting constituencies.
   
   -David Ahlport

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3. 

   biodiversivist Posted 12:55 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   "No more money to Worshington!"Patents are lottery tickets for prizes.
   So is a new business.
   I'd much rather have venture capital. Going for a prize takes money.
   If I wanted to design a 100 mpg "vehicle" because I thought it would sell well and I'd get rich, I'd do it regardless of the existence of a prize. The prize would be of little value. Funding up front would be worth a lot more.
   Your product will not be fully protected by patents. Parts of it will, like parts of Toyota's hybrid drive train. Prizes won't do jack. At best they will give someone a very small percentage of what will be needed for start up funds and some free advertising. At the first hint that you have a product that appeals to consumers, competitors will arrive instantly with better business models and more funding. Prizes will do very little if anything.
   Gingrich has no idea what he is talking about and it shows.
   
   
   
   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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4. 

   wesrolley Posted 1:50 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   Gingrich may be an idiotbut he is in front of the camera and we are not. All we seem to do is to talk to each other, or to Joe Romm at Climate Progress.
   
   Wes Rolley
   
   
   
   CoChair - EcoAction Committee
   
   Green Party US

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5. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 2:12 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   re: BioDWell the other problem with "Prizes"
   
   Is that you generally wouldn't reach the benchmark needed to win the prize, for years.
   And by that time, the size of the prize would be a pittance compared to the size of your normal annual profit.
   _
   Besides which, Prizes make the assumption that we need drastically new technology to achieve our goals.
   When what we really need is plain investment.
   
   -David Ahlport

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6. 

   Ted Nace Posted 2:31 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   Sir Isaac Newthead actually has a point hereZakaria, like most people, believes that a carbon tax would push the market toward better stuff. This is obviously true to an extent, but if that's all that were needed to fix the energy economy we'd have already have a much more energy efficient economy than we actually do, since energy efficiency investments are clearly cheaper than buying watts or therms from any utility in the country. Yet it's not happening to the extent it should, largely because of a host of institutional factors,  market failures, what-ever-you-wanna-call-em. That's why Gingrich has a good point when he talks about the benefit of prizes. Sometimes you have to do extra stuff to get things to work right. It might be positive incentives like prizes. More likely, though, it's going to be command-and-control stuff, as in: "By 2016 any coal plant built before 1965 must be shut down, whether or not carbon taxes or cap-and-trade have made it uneconomical. Why? Because We the People say so."
   
   Help build CoalSwarm-- a shared informational resource on coal and alternatives to coal.

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7. 

   Bob Wallace Posted 8:22 pm
   13 Jan 2009

   Old Newt...Just think how much further along we might be in solving the climate change problem if Newt hadn't almost singlehandedly brought us the Republican Revolution and George W. Bush....

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