In blue economy, green jobs are in play | Dallas Business News

Skeptics fear that the president-elect's Green New Deal will do little but waste taxpayer's money. The government squandered billions on the Jimmy Carter-era synthetic-fuels program, a failed effort to create vehicle fuel from coal. Corn-based ethanol -- the latest recipient of fat subsidies -- is loathed by many environmentalists, who say it's an inefficient fuel that gobbles precious cropland and helps to drive up food prices.

Better to let the market decide, not the state, said Donald Boudreaux, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Virginia.

"The history of government picking winners in the U.S. is not that grand," he said. "People instinctively love the idea of green jobs. ... But there is a lot of mass stupidity out there."

Renewable energy proponents, such as former California Treasurer Phil Angelides, say stupidity would be sticking with current U.S. energy policy, which has turbocharged global warming, super-sized the trade deficit and propped up oil-rich regimes hostile to American interests.