From the aptly named Ken Green’s response to the whole kerfuffle:
Now, I’m all for ending all subsidies to all forms of energy, and for eliminating all of the regulations that distort energy markets by forcing in various politically favored forms of energy (like wind, solar, and ethanol). Then the market could figure out what kind of energy is best for the myriad ways in which our energy civilization consumes it.
Frankly, there’s no way that this would ever happen. The greens may pretend to share common ground with conservatives and libertarians, but that’s all it is, a pretense. In this case, Dave Roberts over at uber-green Grist pretends to care about “market distortions that incentivize inefficiency” which should, he thinks, attract some fiscal conservatives to join greens in an effort to end the welfare.
But Roberts is a sort of one-way fiscal conservative. He doesn’t want the government to get out of the way and let the market work things out. His idea of removing market distortions is simply to shift them to favor what he wants, while using regulations to force more renewable energy onto the market.
Every so often, usually after a profound defeat of some part of the green agenda, this discussion pops up, and environmental groups try to engage business groups in “green scissor” endeavors to find “common ground” where they can work together to “reduce waste.” That’s the public face they show when they’ve overreached, and been slapped down by the public, or by Congress. They hope to co-opt a few conservatives so they can say, “See? We’re not really lunatic leftists, we’re working with business!” Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they continue to pursue an anti-business, big-government, big-regulatory state.
There’s a reason that conservatives and libertarians find little common ground with the greens: it’s because they’re not fooled when greens like Roberts claim to actually care about the things they value, such as economic freedom, individual liberty, personal responsibility, smaller government, lower taxes, and less regulation.