Where are those Greens?

The June, 2009, Reason features "It's Alive! Alternative energy subsidies make their biggest comeback since Jimmy Carter". Science has advanced, but politics has not.

Not included in the online version is Lynne Kiesling's excellent companion piece "Electric Intelligence ... Establishing smart grid requires regulatory reform not subsidies ... President Barack Obama included $4.5 billion in smart grid subsidies in the stimulus package Congress enacted in February. But absent substantial regulatory reform, mostly at the state level, such federal spending may simply reinforce a century-old model that is all but obsolete."

The technology has advanced, but the textbook clunker rationalization of "natural monopolies" has been seized by the utilities and their politician allies to assure that the money will be spent, but that the grid status quo endures. It could have been the other way around.

Where is the Green lobby when it could do some good?