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By Mal (anonymous) | Posted January 28, 2014 at 22:32:48 in reply to Comment 97255
Meant to type "buoy", but I get where you're going. All forms of energy are subsidized. But however valid the point, it would be outside of the analogy invoked, namely that of 19th Century industrialists taking a leap of faith by investing cast sums of private money in the construction of something that they believed would repay the investment.
Again: "Turner spoke of visionary merchants who invested in projects - such as the Erie Canal - that at the time were looked at as foolish and wasteful. In hindsight, however, those merchants who saw the changing winds of industry ultimately benefited when things really took off."
I am unaware of comparable leaps of faith in the renewables sector. As you point out, the closer analogy would appear to be that of the status quo, not the frontier mentality of 200+ years ago. Even would-be paradigm shifters like Pembina can't see their way out of that box, and instead simply call for shifting the subsidy from one industry to the next.
This would presumably be in addition to the sweetheart 20-year renewables contracts already handed out in many Western countries and submarkets. Not that such windfalls are necessarily reliant upon producing power: thestar.com/news/queenspark/2013/09/11/ontario_paying_for_wind_turbines_to_not_produce_electricity.html
Then again, the mythology of the canal builders may have been laid on with a trowel:
"Thomas Jefferson said that 'making a canal 350 miles through a wilderness is little short of madness,' and President James Madison vetoed a bill that would have provided federal land grants to help New York with the project. Nevertheless, despite scoffing at the project known as 'Clinton's Ditch'--named after the canal's chief backer, Governor DeWitt Clinton--the engineers, diggers, and political leaders and voters in New York persisted. Altogether, roughly 85 percent of the capital for the Erie Canal came from the New York state government and local governments along the route."
digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3509
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