The Sad Death of Green Tech

Back in 2003, green technology looked like the future, and a bipartisan consensus was forming around it. David Brooks recalls getting a ride in Prius from a conservative foreign policy hawk, who touted it as an antidote to foreign oil dependency. "From that date on, the story begins to get a little sadder," Brooks writes in the New York Times. Al Gore politicized global warming, destroying "any slim chance of building a bipartisan national consensus," and Barack Obama promised America 5 million "green jobs."

"Renewable energy has many virtues, but it is not a jobs program," Brooks writes. Green jobs proved expensive, and while some firms prospered, others, like A123 and Solyndra, failed spectacularly. Meanwhile, countries around the world were also propping up green tech, leading to a "gigantic oversupply." Today, fossil fuels look like the future and no one is talking about climate change. "Global warming is still real. Green technology is still important," Brooks writes. "But he who lives by the subsidy dies by the subsidy." Read the full column here. (More green jobs stories.)