Tax oil corporations and use the money to fund alternative energy development? Sounds like a no-brainer. That’s the gist of California’s Proposition 87, and indeed, I’m for it and think all right-thinking people should be too. But today’s LA Times does have a good counterpoint:
“(V)enture capitalists with investments in alternative energy firms are huge donors to the campaign… There is nothing to prevent such investors from sitting on the board that allocates the research money generated by the proposition, which is precisely the conflict-ofinterest problem that has tainted California’s last experiment with taxpayer-funded research, 2004’s stem cell initiative .”
The Times goes on to say, less convincingly, that there’s already plenty of money going into alt-energy development and that oil companies are overtaxed in California as it is.
