This is fascinating, not least the comparison of private funding to government funding:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
"But now, after more than $100 million in private funding and $17 million in government grants, several hurdles have tumbled. The Carthage plant has been optimized and is expected to turn a small profit."
This works well for a few of my guiding principles:
1) Recycling will advance in leaps and bounds in coming years as the price of resources increases, and the costs of nanotechnology decreases. This bodes well for current landfill concerns.
2) We are not going to run out of oil in my lifetime. But we also won't stop trying to burn as much of it as possible.
3) The government need not bother taxing us to pay for research into alternative fuels. I'm sure the £17M was useful, but I see no reason why they could not have secured that 15% contribution from elsewhere.
Raising capital for alternative energy research and deployment is the only sector where it is easy to raise money today, Governments do NOT have to pump money into Energy Research!
This is a common misconception thrust upon us by the Environmentalists via public policy forcings. Throwing large sums at a problem is never a real solution, focusing investor dollars is the only real way to make progress because private equity demands results.
The US Government, from the recent news will have no money left anyways for anything but their new business of saving the housing market, the UK Government is pretty busy with their banking business. This socializing of private companies better stop soon or we will simply be a bunch of public servants relying on the Government for everything including our incomes.
Want to start a business? Nope the Government is in that business and one thing they hate is having to compete with the private sector, because if they lose it is the taxpayer who pays the price.