Obama Outrage Dujour

The allegedly “green” president has just killed funding for hydrogen powered cars, even though they already work and were ready to roll out next year. Even though they work great and put out zero pollution.

In the newly released budget, the U.S. Department of Energy cuts $100 million from the hydrogen fuel cell program in fiscal year 2010 and transforms its name to “fuel cell technologies.” Hydrogen, of course, is just the fuel of a fuel cell—a device that recombines hydrogen and oxygen to produce water and electrical current. Still, the name change distances the Obama administration from the “hydrogen economy” goals of their predecessors.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘No,’” said energy secretary Steven Chu in a briefing on the budget for reporters yesterday, citing the need for better fuel cells and a near complete lack of infrastructure.

The 2010 budget now gives some $68 million for ongoing fuel cell research, primarily focused on the devices serving in buildings and other applications, rather than cars, compared to $168 million for the hydrogen program in 2009.

This is something I really wanted to see succeed. The reasons they give are absurd. They can easily be fixed. The truth is the call for green technology is a scam. They just want to funnel money down rat holes of their choosing.

Incidentally, this is amusing. The very idea of regulating green house gasses is such a joke in the first place.