I'm still more-or-less an outsider to this particular issue, but I can certainly understand the overall point here; politics is a necessary evil if ever there was one...
How exactly the ideals of the "greenies" are to be achieved without this sort of interventionism, I don't know. None of the available power sources are without environmental issues of one kind or another, that much is certain. Some say that nuclear is the only type that will adequately serve the baseload in the near future, while others won't touch it with a 10km pole (despite that it has been responsible for a bare handful of deaths, compared to fossil-fuel generation).
Whatever the "energy crisis" ultimately means for us - be that abandoning whole-house heating/cooling, businesses having to make do with dimmer lighting, accepting restricted power availability at night, etc. - it won't be solved with the fantasies of hippies, nor with the intense polarisation that develops around emotionally charged issues (well, almost any political issue, really). Combine those with politicians too stupid to make reasonable compromises, and there you have the cycle of interference and inaction. (And in case you're wondering, I make no claims for the viability of those mentioned saving measures.
)
If anything, what most desparately needs to be invented is a system to keep lunatics out of political power. (Not that I expect it to actually work well.
) I can't deny that corporations wield, in general, too much power - but nor would I deny that groups like Greenpeace
(they actually call themselves that?) receive too much credence for the general good.
