I readily admit I am not a policy wonk (though I follow environmental issues more closely than most).

I am aware of green home initiatives at various levels of government (I've owned a home in the past, and have taken advantage of some of those). Again, I'm not opposed to the subsidies and tax credits that incentivize power reduction.

> Characterizing the current policy as "let's give wealthy people more money to play with" is inaccurate, unless you think the people filling out the form to get a $50 rebate on attic insulation are doing so on a yacht.

We're not talking about a $50 rebate. This is a tax credit worth several thousand dollars, for an upgrade that increases the value of a home by a notable amount, for a home that will probably still consume more power than a poor family's apartment.

My concerns about this are:

1. We are past the point of inevitable crisis in terms of climate change; we really can't do enough at this point to stave off significant human health, ecological, and economic impact. Even if we, as a nation, started making significant changes today (which we are politically farther away from than we've been in decades), we'd still face serious problems.

2. There are households that consume multiples of what poor families consume...and they're being rewarded with heavily discounted amazing new home upgrades because of it, increasing their wealth and decreasing tax revenue. Yes, it has a positive environmental result, and it may be worth it, but are there ways we can reward lower power users, too. Many municipalities have tiered power prices; e.g. .11/kWh for the first 500, .12/kWh for the next 1000, etc. Maybe that needs to be more aggressive. Directly addressing usage can incentivize a wide variety of changes, and discourage McMansions (which are disastrous from a wide variety of angles). Egregious energy consumers are externalizing their environmental impact. (This is even more true on a commercial and industrial level but that's another discussion entirely.)

3. Poor folks often can't get any of the stuff you're talking about (e.g. subsidies for insulation), because they rent. So, they are at the mercy of their landlord for how efficient their home is (and that's a potential problem with tiered pricing; there obviously needs to be incentives for landlords to increase efficiency and disincentives for owning inefficient properties, too).

I think you're taking my talking about the issues as being Policy Pronouncements, and that those pronouncements can be simplified into "Take money from rich people and give it to poor people".

It isn't (and I tried to make that clear in each of my rants on the subject). I am not saying, "These subsidies should not exist, and we should give money to the poor." I am saying, "Poor people are getting fucked daily, often to improve the position of wealthy people and in the name of something inarguably good, like 'protecting the environment'; how about we start trying to figure out how to fix that?" Add up the thousands of tiny ways wealth inequality is enabled in the US, often in the name of good things (like making neighborhoods safer, improving the environment, reducing drug use, etc.), and we end up with the low churn of wealth, and increasing chasm between the classes, that we currently see.

I get where you're coming from, I just don't think it's very relevant to solar power or energy subsidies. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting screwed a long time before solar power was invented; I don't see how these subsidies are any better or worse an example than anything else. It feels like your issue is more emotional than anything else (hence why you keep saying "rewarded", as if homeowners buying solar panels weren't spending their own money on something that benefits their community). As in, it feels distasteful to spend money on something that benefits the rich, when you're hyper-aware of the plight of the poor. That's understandable, but it's a terrible way to think about a policy like this, because we spend about $4B/year on solar subsidies, which is enough to make a noticeable difference in solar installations but nowhere near big enough to affect income inequality.

Believe me, I'm all in favor of "Take money from rich people and give it to poor people". Which we already do, in a variety of ways! I just think we ought to be able to talk about specific policies like "Should we spend money on getting more solar power?" separately from that. You think climate change is an urgent problem? I agree, which is why the objection you're raising here seems like quibbling. If an asteroid were hurtling towards the Earth, and someone proposed that we build a rocket to fly a ragtag group of oilrig workers led by Bruce Willis to blow it up and save the world, would you stand up in that meeting and say, "Yeah, I guess that would work, but I'm concerned that it might exacerbate income inequality"?