Solar technologies are indeed advancing impressively. At the point that they make economic sense, there will be a natural ramping up of usage. Rather than subsidy I believe in removing all existing subsidies, including all the substantial subsides for various conventional energy sources. Reasonable taxes reflecting actual polution costs of the various energy sources should be instituted. In short, the fairest possible playing field should be developed for all energy sources to compete within.

I get very tired of government prematurely addressing problems with large sums of money that are in fact very inefficiently used for a variety of reasons. Bureaucracy, premature technology introduction, and just plain politics are all factors that limit the usefulness of government attempting to replace what private enterprise does best. Let the markets work and we will achieve a reasonable and methodical energy transition from fossil fuel based to an effective mixed fuel based market. Various government "tilting at windmills" projects have been the "drug war", "great society", war on cancer, "star wars"(SDI), human genome project, and even the manned space program Apollo, and Space Shuttle, and ISS. These were all programs which either prematurely tried to introduce technology before its time, or failed to even reasonably analyze costs, systemic feedback, practibility, and/or unintended consequences.

The premature ( and thus wasteful) application of technology actually slows the solution of technological problems by sapping the economy from its more efficient action. Let the markets determine where the "ripe fruit" are hanging and pick those off one by one, and the economy will have more money to invest for planting more fruit trees and modifiy the fruit trees so they will ripen faster.

I do share much of the excitement and optimism about solar and other alternative sources in the future. At the very least they put a cap on how high energy prices can get before vast application of such alternatives will "flash." I know it is unfashionablable to tout capitilism, but making a profit insures somthing is getting efficiently applied.