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PoliticaleEconomic Governance of Renewable Chapter j 4 73

environment has become severe and thus even more significant for future
generations around the world.
The historical difference has been that the American contemporary
economic ideology of marketforces is simply a balance of supply and de-
mand. This neoclassical economic model has failed for many reasons, but
especially due to one of the two key issues presented in The Economist
special issue (July 2009) that points out that economics is not a science. This
is important for a number of reasons, but the basic one, which pertains to the
GIR, is that contemporary economics does not apply to major industrial
changes, such as the GIR, let alone the beginning of the 2IR. For most
economists to be confronted with a challenge to their field being a science or
not is disturbing. The “dismal science” may be boring with its statistics, but
to not be a science brings questions to theentirecontemporaryfieldof
economics and its future.
The debate is over how does a community or nation change? Economics is
one of the key factors. The issue is, are “market forces” the key economic
change factor? The 2IR discovered that market forces or businesses by
themselves could not get fossil fuels and other sources of energy into the
economy at reasonable costs. Time, government support, and policies provided
the market with capital and incentives. Additionally, the GIR economics in-
cludes economic externalities such as the environmental and health costs.
In short, the “market force” neoclassical paradigm represented the Amer-
ican economic policies (and also the United Kingdom) for over the last four
decades. Prime Minister Thatcher and then President Reagan were the
embodiment and champions of this economic paradigm derived from Adam
Smith (Clark and Fast, 2008). Market force economics had some influence on
the European Union and Asia but then demonstrated its failure in October
2008 with the global economic collapse that started in the United States on
Wall Street. This failure meant that some of the government programs in the
European Union and Asia, which had succeeded, now needed to be given more
economic attention because they basically differed greatly from the US and
UK economic models.
These other nations have been in the GIR now themselves for several
decades, which succeeded and continued to do so with a different economic
model. Northern European Union, Japan, South Korea, and China are clear
documented examples of a different economic model. For example, a key
economic government program representing the GIR in the European Union is
the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT), which started in Germany during the early 1990s and
was successfully taking route in Italy, Spain, and Canada as well as nations in
the European Union and Asia. There are problems in Spain and Germany has
decided to cut it back, whereas the United States has not started a FiT in any
significant, long-term planned policy program on a national, let alone a state,
level. Some US communities and states have started very restrictive and
modest FiT programs.