If you would like to better understand how the U.S. government actually receives huge revenues by controlling the rights to leases and permits for oil, gas and coal extraction (and other minerals), I’ve provided a link to a very insightful website (at the bottom of this post), currently under construction, which has a lot of great information.

Again, it’s under construction so some parts are glitchy, but if you meander through it, it explains a LOT about why our government does not promote or support renewable energy. In just this one way, through lease sales and royalties, the federal government took in nearly $100 billion dollars in a ten year period.

Can anyone say, “conflict of interest?” The US Treasury needs to be “de-coupled” from the fossil fuel industry and the extractive industry, or else there is zero incentive to change to renewables. Less than “zero incentive.” It’s actually an immense (financial) loss to the US government, so how could our situation possibly be any different, right?

The US government hasn’t figured out how to make a bundle off our Sun, the wind, geothermal, etc., because those things belong to all of us, unlike gas and oil. Much like how airplanes didn’t used to offer Wifi because they didn’t know how to profit from it (so they didn’t used to offer it), the US government isn’t going to push renewable energy until it can reap the financial rewards. How short sighted and stupid is that (rhetorically asked, of course)?

The website address for the financial information about income received by the US government from fossil fuel extraction and mineral extraction is here:  http://18f.github.io/doi-extractives-data/