Crony capitalism. Picking winners and losers. Corporate welfare. Market-oriented conservatives opposed to extending the solar energy tax credits in North Carolina don’t mince words. Yet, so far they’ve failed to convince their own party to get rid of them. Last night, the State House adopted a budget which would extend the tax credits for another year, earning opponents the honor of having the Worst Week in Raleigh.
The debate over extending the credits has split the North Carolina Republican Party along its free marketeer/pragmatist axis. The free marketers want an entire course correction in government and they see Republicans embracing solar energy as exemplifying some of the worst of establishment-type politics. It doesn’t help that solar energy is in their minds associated with hippies and granola-eating liberals, as one observer noted.
Beyond that, opponents argue that extending tax credits for solar energy means propping up an industry that wouldn’t exist without the government supporting it. While some may concede that tax credits might have once been a good idea, they maintain the industry has had time enough to grow up on its own. If the government gets out of the way and solar happens to shrivel up and die, so be it. Let the market decide.
Despite this being a core conservative philosophy, a survey of the vote on the budget shows that it does not prevail among the House Republican Caucus. Last night Rep. Marilyn Avila of Wake County introduced an amendment that would strike out the solar credits. It got smacked down, hard, 38-77. The numbers for the overall budget: 94-23, an indication of strong bipartisan support. Those voting against tended to be on the more extreme ends of the ideological spectrum.
That’s where House Republicans opposed to solar find themselves now – on the extremes, and on the sidelines. The fight goes on to the Senate, whose budget will probably look completely different. Interestingly, Governor McCrory, who frequently finds himself on the “pragmatist” side, is with the free marketers on this one; he wants to do away with the credits entirely. So there’s still hope for solar opponents. This week, though, they lost a major battle.
Opponents to extending the solar energy tax credits, for rediscovering that free marketeers don’t run things in at least one chamber of the legislature, this week’s “Worst Week in Raleigh” award is yours. Congrats, or something.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Maybe opponents of solar/wind power should think about geography and geology before ideology. To the best of my knowledge, North Carolina isn’t blessed (if you want to call it that) with vast deposits of coal and/or oil–and if some modest sources of those were discovered, extracting them would wreak havoc with the state’s tourist economy (although that hasn’t seemed to sway advocates of off-shore drilling so far). Blasting out our mountains and turning our beaches into tar haven’t gained a lot of supporters to date, and fracking isn’t attracting a vast horde of supporters either.
Solar and wind power have their limitations, but it’s not surprising that many people prefer them (in combination with conservation measures) to blowing up our state’s natural beauty and majesty or covering it with tar. Keep in mind that our mountains and coastal areas have attracted both population and income to our state–but not a lot of transplants (or natives) are pining for a view of oil derricks and slag heaps. I lived in western Pennsylvania a while back, and I can tell you that the ruins of what used to be a mountain are anything but pretty.
… yet those rightwing, neanderthal conservatives will sure bend over in a heartbeat to embrace and subsidize the extraction of fracked fossil fuels, even if it comes at the expense of polluting the state’s groundwater and whatever little is left of the natural environment. The free marketeers are doing everything in their power to make the renewable energy industry nonviable in the marketplace all while promoting and cuddling the fossil fuel industry, what else would we expect from pro-corporate neanderthals?
Asking any NC uber-conservative to support a budding industry that is heavily dependent on cutting-edge research and technology (ya know, that unimportant “science stuff”) and that is NOT associated with or supported by the traditional fossil fuel industry is big reach…….