Solar and wind energy were booming industries not too long ago, but the economic crisis is having a serious negative effect on their business. Which is why instead of "clean coal" incentives in the Stimulus Bill, we should be focusing on jump starting green technologies. Not only better for our future in terms of climate change concerns, but better in the long run for our economy:

Wind and solar power have been growing at a blistering pace in recent years, and that growth seemed likely to accelerate under the green-minded Obama administration. But because of the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn, the opposite is happening: installation of wind and solar power is plummeting.

Factories building parts for these industries have announced a wave of layoffs in recent weeks, and trade groups are projecting 30 to 50 percent declines this year in installation of new equipment, barring more help from the government. [...]

Much of the problem stems from the credit crisis that has left Wall Street banks reeling. Once, as many as 18 big banks and financial institutions were willing to help finance installation of wind turbines and solar arrays, taking advantage of generous federal tax incentives. But with the banks in so much trouble, that number has dropped to four, according to Keith Martin, a tax and project finance specialist with the law firm Chadbourne & Parke.

Wind and solar developers have been left starved for capital. “It’s absolutely frozen,” said Craig Mataczynski, president of Renewable Energy Systems Americas, a wind developer. He projected his company would build just under half as much this year as it did last year.

Unfortunately, instead of pushing for immediate help for green technologies, the Senate is looking to add in billions of boondoggle funding for "clean coal" an oxymoron if I ever heard one:

Now that the President’s stimulus bill has moved to the Senate, the clean energy debate is likely to take a different tack, raising the more fundamental issue of what constitutes “clean energy” and who gets to define it. The Senators from West Virginia, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, both Democrats, have been pushing to get as much funding as possible into the package for "clean coal" programs.

They have managed to tuck in $4.6 billion for coal-related projects to the Senate version of the bill, causing coal-related heartburn for many environmental advocates. The Senate funding is nearly double the $2.6 billion included in a current House version, and has received the blessing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same stupid thing over and over again. Maybe we should ask the good people of eastern Tennessee what thy think of billions of free federal dollars for an industry that tears the tops off mountains and then allows the toxic sludge they created containing high levels of mercury and arsenic to spill out of its "containment area" thus contaminating their drinking water, destroying their property and posing health risks to young and old alike for decades to come.

The coal industry is the last thing we should be "stimulating" right now. It provides no benefit to halting the fossil fuel emissions which are driving an irreversible climate change on our planet. Nor does funding pet projects for the Coal Industry foster the innovation and future jobs we will need to compete in a global economy. All it does is add to the pollution of our air, our lakes and rivers, and ultimately our oceans. Pollution which may make jellyfish, the cockroaches of the seven seashappy, but is helping to kill fish stocks worldwide.

In short, no one in their right mind would want to stimulate a dying, dirty industry whose products are bad for human life, animal life and plant life. No one but our Congress and President Obama, apparently. Now I appreciate that Obama has to compromise a bit, but tossing out funding for green industries in order to subsidize one of the worst sources of pollution and global warming on earth seems like a very poor bargain to me. Right now most of the stimulus for green technologies is in the form of "tax incentives" which work slowly and will have little immediate impact. What we should be doing is providing not just tax benefits, but investment capital in the form of cheap government loans and also government funding for joint research projects with venture capitalists and other investors into ways to make current technologies more economical, and develop new technologies for the future.

The time to think green is past. What we need to do now is act on those ideas which will not only benefit our economy but also the future for our children and grandchildren who will inherit the earth we leave to them. We may have a once in a lifetime chance to effect the change necessary to remake our world. Caution and compromise with the political powers which are beholden to dirty and outdated industries like coal is not the way to accomplish this change. It's merely business as usual in Washington, and we all know how well that's worked out over the last 30 years.