I think you misread the comment. Oil was proven and investment was pushing it to new heights. Do we really want to spend a lot of money on the same technology, and a new company, or new technology and innovation? I for one don't want another Solyndra. I want a company that is pushing a demonstrated advancement in technology.
Solyndra pushed a demonstrated advance in technology. It just didn't end up being cheaper than the rapidly-falling price of silicon solar cells. Sure, you can play Monday-morning quarterback on that deal, but it was a reasonable bet and the investors (who lost a ton of money) were not fools.
Oh, come on. Open a history book. Oil was far from proven back when coal was king. Many, many companies ate up huge amounts of capital and had nothing to show for it. The process for finding, extracting, processing, transporting and consuming oil and its various byproducts was still in its infancy. There was a lot of mistakes to be made.
You're losing your shit here because some companies didn't work out. And? The road to success is often paved with failure.
Mitt Romney, comparing Tesla to Solyndra, in 2012:
> But don’t forget, you put $90 billion, like 50 years’ worth of breaks, into—into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1. I mean, I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right? So this—this is not—this is not the kind of policy you want to have if you want to get America energy secure.
