Dr. Joseph Kalt speaks to Tucson

Dr. Kalt, a native Tucsonan, Ph.D. economist, professor at Harvard, and someone with no vested interest in Solar technologies, recently recommended we focus public spending on making Arizona a desirable place to live in order to attract business. Education, basic infrastructure maintenance, and beautification projects were mentioned as ways to attract the CEOs that bring businesses to the state. Various subsidies and hand-outs to companies were not recommended and studies indicate these are ineffective means to grow the local economy.

So when a Harvard professor, Ph. D. economist, and native Tucsonan does not recommend, for example, subsidies for solar, why do we do it? Why not use the money for education or infrastructure maintenance as he suggests? Is he a wrong?  Is solar different?

I think he's right and we're making the mistake,  I also think that many of the law makers have been fooled by highly paid solar lobbyist. Solar Electric technology clearly fails any reasonable cost-benefit test, and is the worst option, dollar-for-dollar, to reduce CO2 among the major renewables; wind, geothermal, and biomass, yet the ACC continues to push it.

The failure of our system in this case is caused by two key factors. First, the ACC members do not have the technical and economic backgrounds to not be fooled, and second, the lobbyist are smooth enough to fool even fairly well trained lawmakers. But as it is now, the ACC has no hope to sort through truth from fiction and they’ve put us on a course of higher unemployment and long term damage to the state’s economy.