The author of a damning study about the failure of Spain's "green jobs" program — a story broken here at PJM — received the threatening package on Tuesday from solar energy company Thermotechnic.Spain's Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain's “green jobs' energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.
Says Calzada:
Before opening it, I called [Thermotechnic] to know what was inside Â… they answered, it was their answer to my energy pieces.
Dr. Calzada contacted a terrorism expert to handle the package. The expert first performed a scan of the package, then opened it in front of a journalist, Dr. Calzada, and a private security expert.
The terrorism consultant said he had seen this before:
This time you receive unconnected pieces. Next time it can explode in your hands.
Dr. Calzada added:
[The terrorism expert] told me that this was a warning.
The bomb threat is just the latest intimidation Dr. Calzada has faced since releasing his report and following up with articles in Expansion (a Spanish paper similar to the Financial Times). A minister from Spain's Socialist government called the rector of King Juan Carlos University — Dr. Calzada's employer — seeking Calzada's ouster. Calzada was not fired, but he was stripped of half of his classes at the university. The school then dropped its accreditation of a summer university program with which Calzada's think tank — Instituto Juan de Mariana — was associated.
Additionally, the head of Spain's renewable energy association and the head of its communist trade union wrote opinion pieces in top Spanish newspapers accusing Calzada of being “unpatriotic' — they did not charge him with being incorrect, but of undermining Spain by daring to write the report.
Their reasoning? If the skepticism that Calzada's revelations prompted were to prevail in the U.S., Spanish industry would face collapse should U.S. subsidies and mandates dry up.
As I have previously reported at PJM (here and here), Spain's “green jobs' program was repeatedly referenced by President Obama as a model for what he would like to implement in the United States. Following the release of Calzada's report, Spain's Socialist government has since acknowledged the debacle — both privately and publicly. This month, Spain's government instituted massive reductions in subsidies to “renewable' energy sources.
Dr. Calzada is a friend of mine, kindly writing a blurb for the jacket of my latest book: Power Grab: How Obama's Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. My book details the Spanish “green jobs' disaster uncovered by Dr. Calzada, plus similar “green' economic calamities occurring in Germany and Denmark — also programs Obama has praised — as well as in Italy and elsewhere.
As I detail in Power Grab, they felt Spain would be in a dire position without the U.S. playing the role of sucker. With today's revelation, now we know just how far the “green energy' lobby will go to keep the money flowing.