*Gustave Trouvé's personal electric vehicle (1881), world's first full-scale electric car to be publicly presented*

Inevitably the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity seems to oppose any effort to cut back on fossil-fuel use around here, be it the new regional agreement to cut transportation emissions or anything else. But then this outfit is part of a far-right network of “think tanks’’. They are connected to such operations as Koch Industries, which, among other things, is a major fossil-fuel company, and far-right individuals, many, like the Koch crowd, in bed with the fossil-fuel sector. That sector has long been the beneficiary of massive federal corporate welfare. (There’s far more socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor than most Americans realize.)

The Rhode Island outfit is a devoted promoter of heightened “freedom and prosperity” for billionaires, but not necessarily for the general public. Check out, among other sites, sourcewatch.org, guidestar.org and donorsearch.net for funding information.

As we follow the assertions and “research” of so-called think tanks and other advocacy groups, left, right or in the middle, we should always find out which special-interest groups are financing them. Often they do everything they can to hide their funders. You won’t get straight answers from the “think tank’’ beneficiaries. You have to dig. Lots of “dark money’’ out there.

Scientific realities are forcing the world to move at an accelerated rate away from oil, coal and gas in order to slow global warming, and thus the green-energy sector will be where most of the new energy-sector jobs will be created in the next decade. And the costs of generating and using green energy are falling at a faster and faster clip.

Elon Musk knows what he’s doing with his electric cars.

And note this from the Jan. 28 New York Tim

“General Motors said Thursday that it would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a seismic shift by one of the world’s largest automakers that makes billions of dollars today from gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.”

Hit this link to read the story.

New England, with its famed technology sector and green-energy potential (especially offshore wind power), should be one of the nation’s biggest beneficiaries of the move away from carbon-based energy.

Meanwhile, don’t reject nuclear energy, which is clean except for the politically fraught matter of where to put the spent fuel. It must continue to play an important role in electricity generation, and if the waste issue can be appropriately answered, perhaps a growing one.

Who’s paying that ‘think tank’?