The Case of Solyndra and Why the Government Should Continue to Invest in Clean Energy Companies

Solyndra was a major controversy in the United States because the government gave them a loan in hopes that it would help make a breakthrough towards more accessible clean energy. Anyways, Solyndra went under and it was displayed as the main reason why the government should not be involved in the market because it makes mistakes with their investment decisions. However, they also seem to forget that private companies also make bad investment decisions, which is why they normally diversify their investments so that one bad investment does not ruin the profitability of the group. The government did do this and the recent news that the program turned a profit proved the the government is able to make smart investment decisions. 

The government should be involved in investing in clean energy technology because it cannot wait for the free market to decide to move away from fossil fuels. The government needs to set the path towards clean energy and away from fossil fuels in order for the market to seamlessly switch over. Starting a path towards clean energy is what the government should do and it should be lauded by the people because it helps advance technology and will likely lead to a quicker reduction co2 emissions than what would have resulted under the free market. 

I have a problem with how the Solyndra incident down because it was very public that this company that received a government loan, which made a lot of people mad, but I doubt the success of the program overall will even come close to the amount of coverage the Solyndra scandal received. The government should do what it can in order to give the success as much publicity as possible in order to show people that the government can make smart investments and show clean energy is making its way into our lives. 

Money and Lobbying Ruin the Political Process

Corporate lobbying and corporate money in campaigning is the bane of our democratic process. Corporations can hire lobbyist in order to argue for or against bills on their behalf. This muddies up the democratic process because corporations hold a lot of wealth and can influence congresspeople to vote one way or the other. Congresspeople are responsible to their constituents, but because corporations have the ability to lobby and have their money spread across many congresspeople they are able to influence important votes. This is not how the democratic process should be done and it is probably one of the main reason for the amazing inability to get things done that has plagued our congress for the past six years. 

This problem is highlighted when you look at the issue of global warming. 97% of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and man made, but no solution has been able to pass through the legislative process because of the lobbying abilities of the fossil fuel industry, such as the Koch Brothers. It is not a good sign that a single industry can influence the legislative process to minimize the impact of potential regulation. Especially since science is not on their side and their influence in the regulation process is holding up in progress we might have made in improving our environment. 

Other lobbying should not be ignored either, environmental groups also has a big budget when it comes to lobbying. I am arguing against lobbying of congress and getting private money out of campaigning. There should be absolutely no campaign donations and campaigns should be financed with public money with strict oversight. Getting rid of lobbying all together is tricky, but I believe it should be replaced with a panel who are well versed in their particular fields and they would put together a report on how a particular piece of legislation will affect certain areas of our economy or how it would affect certain industries. They would provide congresspeople with the information and the congresspeople would use this to make informed decisions. This would be quite costly, but since the payoff would be a well functioning democracy, it seems like it would be worth it.