Willy

The government certainly doesn't have a record of running anything efficiently. What needs to happen is a large number of competing power generation companies. Competition is what causes innovation and drives people to provide better service for less money. Government bureaucracy is not the answer. Trust me I work for the government, and my officemate has a $5000 computer monitor just because he wants to have the biggest one in the department. If you want something done in twice the time for 10x the price, let the government do it.

We also need to start building power plants. This is a fact. Solar panels are great, but they are very expensive, and don't put out very much power. We aren't going to solve the energy crisis by telling people to put solar panels on their roof. We need power plants. California hasn't built a power plant of any kind in 10 years, but uses 25% more power than we did 5 years ago.

Thanks to organizations like Greenpeace and "not in my back yard" protesters, it is virtually impossible to build a power plant these days. These people are shooting themselves in the foot, but logic isn't an issue with your average urban SUV drivers that want their air conditioner on all day, want it to be cheap, and don't want the power plant (or even a power line) anywhere close to their house. This is a serious problem now, and is going to get worse. Power plants don't get built over night. The US needs to pull their head out of the sand, and Greenpeace needs to pull it's head out of it's ass, or we're going to go from a bad problem to an all-out disaster. If you think some incentives to buy solar panels is going to fix this problem, you are not in touch with reality.