Wisconsin’s new Gov. Walker has decided that Wisconsin should not participate in the growing midwest “green renaissance”.

This cross-post discusses how Governor Walker’s backwards, Republican ideology is devoted to destroying jobs and clean energy in his state, and in the U.S. as a whole.  Why do these throwbacks keep getting elected?  There is no time to waste in moving forward on clean energy.

For more on the Koch brothers and their plan to buy and control all the power plants in Wisconsin (it’s one theory) see this story.

Gov. Walker Assaults Jobs, Innovation, and Clean Energy in Wisconsin

Newly elected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker held an event called “Wisconsin is Open for Business” the day he was inaugurated. But every move the governor makes shows him to be an antibusiness, anti-innovation politician intent on running the state into the ground.

Let’s take clean energy. Clean energy industries offered a glimmer of hope during the past two years in the midst of a national recession that has hit the Midwest particularly hard. In Michigan, for example, total private employment dropped 5.4 percent from 2005-2008, while during the same period employment increased by 7.7 percent among the state’s 358 “green” firms. Michigan’s new governor, Rick Snyder, recognized the growth potential of these industries when he ran on a 10-point plan that emphasized the need to invest in clean energy sectors such as advanced batteries.

In Ohio, too, the green writing is on the wall. New Gov. John Kasich initially sounded off against clean energy, running on a platform that included rolling back the state’s renewable energy standard. But he reversed this position soon after his election when multiple business leaders told him how important green industries were in the Toledo area in particular. The city, which ranked in the bottom 10 by per capita income in 2000, has seen a renaissance as a hub for solar innovation and production. Over 6,000 individuals are employed in these industries in Toledo today, and the city is home to several major solar panel exporters including First Solar and Xunlight.

Gov. Walker, however, has apparently decided that Wisconsin should take a back seat to the Midwest’s green renaissance. The state has enormous potential to generate homegrown energy from renewable resources. Wisconsin has enough wind, solar, and biomass energy resources to produce power equivalent to the entire state’s electricity needs according to Environment America. But the new governor recently proposed a wind turbine siting law that would effectively shut down most wind power production. The new law, if put into effect, would require wind turbines to be set back at least 1,800 feet from any nearby property unless all affected property owners agree to the turbine in writing.

Only one-fourth of Wisconsin’s current wind turbines would ever have been built if this rule had been in place in the past. In other words, 2,250 fewer people would have construction or maintenance jobs, over a million fewer dollars would be flowing to rural communities [...]