The Cost of Lost Opportunities: The Bailout, the War, and Renewable Energy

From an article by Paul Gipe:

While the renewable energy industry in the U.S. celebrates a rare victory -- winning an eight-year extension of its federal tax subsidies -- no one should forget what we've lost.

Forget for a moment the recurring costs of an inflated defense budget. Chalmers Johnson has tallied those. Let's look at the two biggest items, the ones that stand out so strikingly: the war in Iraq and the recent financial bailout.

Much has been written about the lost opportunities from the enormous expense of the Iraq war. But few yet have tallied what we're missing when combining the cost of both the war and the recent bailout. At last count, the direct costs of the war in Iraq passed $550 billion. The bank bailout is budgeted at $700 billion. We're on the hook for nearly $1.3 trillion!