Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Quotes
...it is true that renewable energy is expensive and can't be done without public sector support, it is an important investment in the future.
Rodríguez Zapatero, José Luis. "Address on Energy Policy." Congress of Deputies, Madrid, 2009.
Lott, like many other reasonably intelligent people who understood little about technology, did not realize that all the early efforts with a technology are relatively primitive and even the best ideas have to be engineered to scale and cost efficiency. A decade later, solar energy had become a significant industry in the work and the United States, which had invented many of the early technologies had lost the international lead in Solar Energy to Germany and China. The ultimate value of any technology cannot be judged by the initial technological efforts.
His assertion that wind energy is less expensive than the fossil fuel alternative is not accurate if one accounts for the costs on the basis of conventional accounting methods. It was at that time more expensive which is why it’s use was limited. However, the existing methods of accounting did not charge the fossil fuels for the environmental degregation that they cause and the cost to society to overcome these or live with them. More important there is no charge to the cost of fossil fuels for the deleterious health effects that their extraction and use cause. Global warming / climate change is not considered at all in the economic analysis.
He was speaking from retirement. When he was Prime Minister--2001-2005, and active politically, he was in favor of nuclear power for Japan. But after the meltdown of the reactors at Fukishima, he saw happening exactly what the corporation executives running the nuclear power told him could never happen. He aslo supported the claims of American Sailor who had provided much help in the nuclear emergency that they were suffering from deseases brought on by teh excessibe radiation that they encountered.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is a Spanish politician and member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). He was the Prime Minister of Spain being elected for two terms, in the 2004 and 2008 general elections. On 2 April 2011 he announced he would not stand for re-election in the 2011 general election and left office on 21 December 2011.
