"...staggering failure...."

But, of course, this is Murica, we don't need no stinking alternative energy.  We just drill us another oil well, squeeze some sand, or buy a bigger SUV.  We could have been so much more, so much better.

Renewable energy offers the best hope for an economic boom in the coming decades.

Those who feel this can be accomplished without clean-energy goals and incentives are ignoring reality. China and Germany, with vastly smaller economies, invested more in clean energy than the United States last year. It was Chinese competition that ultimately doomed Evergreen Solar. Americans who tout the old nostrum that all businesses need is a level playing field forget that the energy sector has never been level; the heavily subsidized and regulated oil and gas industries attest to that.