So remember how just one short blog ago, I was writing about how great it was that both the House and the Senate had passed bills that extended tax breaks for alternative energy?

Scratch that.

Apparently, should I ever again write a sentence that includes the words "House," "Senate" and "great" together, I should be strapped to a solar reflector until my skin crisps off.

For while it is true that they both passed bills ostensibly aimed at accomplishing the same thing, those bills are incompatible with each other and are unlikely to be signed into law before our fearless leaders come home to ask for you to send them back to Washington to continue to provide this most excellent leadership on crucial issues facing the nation.

According to this blog posting from The Wall Street Journal, even The White House hates the House version of the bill.

Maybe that's because the House bill insists "on actually paying for the tax credits with tax hikes elsewhere" the Journal reported in the blog, appropriately headlined "From the Dept. of Futile Gestures."

Or maybe it's because, as Kate Shepherd reported here in Grist Magazine's Muckraker, "the House version strips out tax incentives for oil shale and tar sands development, as well as provisions to support coal-to-liquid fuels."

Regardless, the end results is the same. Politics as usual kills something this country desperately needs. Sound familiar?

Is there any common sense left in Washington? Or is "drill baby drill" the nearest we can come to reasoned discourse in Washington?

The House vote marked the sixth time the House has passed these extensions. "The bill stalled repeatedly in the Senate, until a compromised version of the package passed earlier this week," Grist reported.

"At the time of passage, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged House members not to change the legislation, worrying that any changes to the package would bring about its demise. 'If the House doesn't pass this, the full responsibility of it not passing is theirs,' said Reid. 'It's not ours,.'" Grist reported.

Apparently, the Senate's previous five failures to pass a bill shouldn't count. Geez, how many strikes do they get?

Don't you just love a leadership more worried about blame then credit; political liability than energy sustainability?

"House Democrats are holding firm that theirs is the superior version," according to Grist. "'This legislation also holds true to our commitment to fiscal responsibility,' said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a statement today. 'By closing loopholes that allow corporations and executives to avoid U.S. taxes by shipping jobs and investment overseas and curtailing unnecessary tax subsidies for big, multinational oil and gas companies, we are ensuring that future generations don't foot the bill for the progress we can make today.'"

Sounds reasonable to me, but hey, what do I know? Maybe continuing tax breaks for fossil fuels is a good way to prevent global warming.

In a quick Thin Green Line update on that issue by the way, we bring you this report from The New York Times' most excellent environmental reporter Andrew Revkin.

In this brief, he writes: "Worldwide emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from fuel burning and cement production increased by 3.5 percent per year from 2000 to 2007, nearly four times the growth rate in the 1990s, according to a new report. The rapid rise is being driven primarily by economic growth in developing countries, which now produce more greenhouse gas than industrialized countries. The report was produced by the Global Carbon Project and is available online at globalcarbonproject.org."

On the positive side of this issue (who says we're all gloom and doom here at The Thin Green Line?), Reuters reported here last week that: "Rich nations' greenhouse gas emissions dipped for the first time in five years in 2006, easing 0.1 percent despite robust economic growth, a Reuters survey of the latest available information showed Friday.

For the record, we're one of those "rich nations."

The fact that we can lower emissions while increasing economic growth puts a stake in the heart of the old fossil axiom that reducing emissions will hurt the economy.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

According to this Reuters report, alternative energy has revived a moribund economy in, of all places, rural Texas.

A wind power boom there has generated millions of dollars in additional tax revenue which is being used to build schools and has fueled an economic revival there, Reuters reported.

Two years ago, the Blackwell School District there had a property tax roll totaled $324 million. "Now the total value has mushroomed to $1.2 billion due to the build-out of four nearby wind farms," according to the report.

Tell me Pottstown or Pottsgrove school districts wouldn't love to be able to take that much of a burden off local taxpayers here. But closed-minded, old-school (dare I say say "bitter") readers of The Mercury continue to call the paper's "Sound-Off" column poo-pooing the potential benefit of a solar park being championed for the former OxyChem site off Armand Hammer Boulevard.

"The hotels are full, the restaurants are full," said Karan Bergstrom of Sweetwater, ground-zero for the wind boom which now rivals the city's famous rattlesnake roundup. "There's not an empty house," Bergstrom said.

When is the last time we said that about Pottstown?

But the entrepreneurs who want to do similar things in other parts of the country (maybe even here?!) won't get any help from our representatives in Washington apparently.

"The legislative stalemate will just prolong the agony for America’s clean-energy sector," the Journal reports in its blog titled "Environmental Capital."

It seems even the Journal realizes that the economy of the next century will have to be based on something other than fossil fuels.

There was even some hope held out for the "little guy" in those bills with federal tax breaks upped from $2,000 to $12,000 for those installing solar arrays on their homes, an outlay that can reach $40,000, according to The Journal.

But now, the only hope for a bill this year seems to be a "lame-duck" session after the November elections.

As far as the country's energy policy is concerned, it doesn't seem we will have to wait until November to apply the word "lame."

Suddenly, solar power is hot.

And no, I don't mean the special oil heated by fields of mirrors in the Mojave desert (although that's hot too).

No, what I mean is that perhaps Malcolm Gladwell's famous "tipping point" may have been reached.

Prodded, no doubt, by the constant pleas on this blog and the mighty influence of the Thin Green Line's 13 regular readers, both the House and Senate this month passed by large margins, legislation that will extend tax breaks for investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Of course, this being Washington, the bills are different so the two houses of Congress have to negotiate something they can both agree on, never a sure thing in this day and age when everyone talks the bi-partisanship talk, but almost universally fails to walk the walk.

According to this Sept. 26 article in The New York Times, "the tax credit would increase domestic investment in the solar industry by $232 billion by 2016 and generate 440,000 jobs, many in manufacturing, construction and engineering."

But now that we have Washington on board (we hope) with taking advantage of the most free, most renewable, most dependable energy source in the solar system, we turn around to find our fellow tree huggers raising a fuss.

What am I talking about?

Well according to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, environmentalists in the southern California desert are protesting massive solar projects planned for flat land where the sun shines 364 days a year.

Their problem? The Mojave ground squirrel, the desert tortoise and the burrowing owl. (Why is it always an owl?)

Time for a little hypocrisy.

Yes, this blog supports protecting old-growth forests from logging for the spotted owl. Yes, this blog, with some reservations, believes hydro-power (another green source) needs to take the needs of migrating fish into account.

So do we need to worry about the squirrel, the tortoise and the owl too? Aristotle would argue that we cannot support the preservation of one habitat and support the disturbance of another only because it's hot and dry and only crazy people would want to live there. (Sorry mom).

But Aristotle, hemlock and all, lived in a world of theoretical absolutes and we live in a world where even crazier people live in an even hotter desert half a world away and sometimes you have to choose the lesser evil.

Condemn me if you will green purists, but I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of massive solar power installations on this one. And for justification, I will turn to a justification so often over-used by the administration I love to criticize.

The answer, folks, is national security. This country can simply no longer afford to depend on a fossil fuel technology. When Barack Obama talks about building a new energy infrastructure in ten years, he is talking about a necessity, not a frill.

If you doubt me, ask the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, it's not just in California's deserts that such projects are being proposed.

According to this Sept. 24 article in The Mercury (written by yours truly), one use being championed for the former OxyChem site in Lower Pottsgrove is a solar power park.

The proposal comes within the framework of a joint project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Dept. of Energy. It is a push to put alternative energy projects on former industrial sites, often called "brownfields," on which it is often difficult to attract redevelopment. Talk about a win-win.

(Click here to learn more about this program.)

Meanwhile in the win-win department, and also to show that not all Californians lean toward lunacy, I point to yet another article in the Times which is cause for hope.

In the far-left bastion of Berkeley, the city council is doing something innovative.

As this Sept. 17 article illustrates, the city is starting a low-interest loan program to encourage the installation of solar power in its homes.

"The loans, which are likely to total up to $22,000 apiece, would be paid off over 20 years as part of the owners’ property-tax bills," according to the Times. This will make solar power more accessible to people who cannot afford the up-front costs and thus cannot benefit from the usual tax-break incentive government favors.


Already cities from San Francisco to Annapolis, Md., and Seattle, to Cambridge, Mass., are calling to get the details.

Here in Pottstown however, we're actually trying to limit solar power installations under the rationale that they could ruin the lines of our historic architecture.

According to this Sept. 13 article in The Mercury (also written by yours truly), the Pottstown Planning Commission has proposed changes to the zoning law that would regulate how solar panels could be installed. Borough Council has agreed to hold a public hearing on the subject, but no date has yet been set.

This may once again be an occasion for hypocrisy as I am not sure, despite my love for old homes (I live in a house built in 1916 after all), whether its wise to deny energy-efficiency to those whose homes are least likely to have it.

We may even have to get the police may have to get involved.

For it seems that solar panels are popular not only with city councils and other law-makers and law-abiding citizens. According to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, solar panels are now in such demand that people are stealing them!

"Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics," according to the Times.

"Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet," the paper reported.

So (wait for it....) when I said solar power is "hot," I meant it in more ways than one!

(Oh come on, don't groan. That one was sweet!)