More Spending on Potato Chips Than Clean Energy R&D

For the  third year in a row, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, held a day-long clean energy summit, gathering high-level industry leaders, policy experts, investors, and public officials to talk over important things in Nevada.

Called the “National Clean Energy Summit 3.0: Investing in American Jobs,” this latest gathering, on September 7, 2010, yielded some interesting points of view and a passel of spiffy quotes.

As John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, charged in his remarks: “This year’s summit reinforces the urgency of adopting a national clean energy strategy that boosts private investments for new technologies and jobs.”

Podesta suggested that the remaining “potential in the sustainable energy market could revive the stalled economy and end the recession.”

He also told the assembly that “The focus now has got to be on getting these worlds and mechanisms together to finance innovative, renewable technology.”

Austan Goolsbee, lead economist for Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, claimed that clean energy “has the potential to employ both highly skilled scientists and blue-collar workers hurt by the stalled construction industry,” and pointed out that “it offers a wider distribution of opportunity than almost any advanced future-leaning industry that you can think of.” Goolsbee suggested the goal that “export-led growth in United States should emphasize clean energy technology.”

Phillippe Cousteau told those at the summit that “Time is running out for ourselves and future generations. The cost to our health, the cost to our security, and the cost to the environment of our addiction to fossil fuels has distorted our economy.”

L. John Doerr, an American venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, told the astonished assembly that “the total amount we’re spending on clean-energy research and development programs is right around $5 billion. Americans spend more on potato chips than we spend on clean-energy research and development.”

In fact, until recently, the federal government was spending less on clean energy R&D than, not just potato chips, but also on federal employee parking subsidies!

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