Today our Supreme Court decided that corporations have more free speech than the rest of us.  That’s because they have a lot more money than us.  By a 5 to 4 vote, the court lifted long-standing limits on corporate spending in political campaigns, opening the door for private entities to flood the political marketplace with corporate money.  Corporations can now donate unlimited amounts of money to candidates for political office in creative ways;  like attack ads, movies, TV infomercials and “documentaries”, for instance.   Corporate money is now protected “free speech”, so our politicians will now be bought and paid for by fossil fuel companies, among others.

The Court’s decision has made it twice as hard to pass meaningful global warming legislation, unless politicians or think tanks can find a way to maximize profits from something that is basically just the right thing to do.  They can’t even sell corporation-friendly “cap and trade”.   Approaches (other than pleas to do what’s necessary to save life on earth) have been tried to drum up some enthusiasm for renewable energy — some in Washington have tried to push “green energy” as a job provider, for instance.  But support among politicians to stop climate change is vague and it’s not a priority.  Saving life on earth can wait.  Unemployment is still over 10% in the U.S. while people are still talking about these elusive “green jobs”.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of money to be made in wind and solar power,  so there will probably never be big corporate support for it.   Think of getting 20% or more of our energy from wind power and how many jobs it would create if our government could commit to something like that.  If they did, it could stimulate jobs in building transmission lines as well as the actual wind turbines.  But then, corporations would find a way to patent or own the wind so they could profit from it.  And given what happened today, the Supreme Court would probably rule that the wind can indeed be patented by GE, or maybe Shell or Exxon. In America, corporations rule.

From e360:  Wind energy could provide 20 percent of the electricity for the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but only if the nation makes a significant financial investment, according to new government report. About $90 billion would be required to install a network of land- and sea-based wind turbines and about 22,000 miles of new power lines, according to the study published by U.S. Energy Department.

Read the study overview

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The report said that the government would have to provide a significant portion of that investment through programs such as loan guarantees. “We can bring more wind power online, but if we don’t have the proper infrastructure to move that power around, it’s like buying a hybrid car and leaving it in the garage,” said David Corbus, project manager for the study. To reach [...]