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Unintended Consequences
Or What Happens When The
"Green" Hype Doesn’t Match The Reality...
by Ronald J. Manera
E thanol meister, climate-change illusionist
and Vice-President Al Gore in 1994:
"It’s well known that I’ve always supported
ethanol. I have a consistent record of shoring up the farm
safety net. I have not ducked when votes for ... agricultural
interests were on the floor. Our administration’s goal is to
triple the use of biomass technologies, ethanol, gasoline
additives, and other environmentally friendly products by 2010.
This is just one of the exciting ways our efforts to protect the
environment will begin to help America’s ailing farming
economy."
THE HYPE
Years ago, Al Gore and his legions of earnest
save-the-planet "greenies" scrambled to enact laws subsidizing
ethanol production. They promised us energy independence, an
eco-friendly fuel source. reduced carbon-output and crop-price
stabilization. It was the ultimate "win-win" solution — or so we
were told.
THE REALITY
That was the hype. This is the reality:
Ethanol production has driven up the price of food at twice the
rate of inflation. So severe is the effect on some poorer
nations that a corn shortage has already resulted in starvation
and food riots. For the amount of corn you need to fill up the
gas tank of a Cadillac, you could feed a man for a year.
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"Well, it seemed like a good
idea at the time.." |
Ethanol and soy bio-fuels produce about twice
the emissions as petroleum based fuels. With the exception of
sugar, the other bio-fuels such as corn and soy are net carbon
emitters — being insufficiently efficient to cut emissions when
burned as fuel by more than the emissions created in their
production.
As to energy independence - we burned about
25% of our corn crop for fuel last year - and reduced our oil
consumption by 1%. Further, ethanol is less efficient than fuel
from petroleum. In an automobile, for example, your mileage will
decrease, and so you must use more of it to get where you are
going.
It seems the bio-fuel promoters didn’t even
do the math: If we were to burn 100% of our corn and soy crop
for fuel, we would be able to fuel less than 20% of our on-road
vehicles with the ethanol produced. And we’d starve.
Guess who is paying to finance this failed
ethanol adventure? You are. The cost of ethanol subsidies to the
American taxpayers: $8 billion in 2007 — $26 for every man,
woman and child in America — on top of what you have been gouged
for at the pump.
AL LOVES
THE RAIN FOREST
In Al Gore’s 1993 best seller, Earth In
The Balance, he asserted, "The most dangerous form of
deforestation is the destruction of the rain forests, especially
the tropical rain forests clustered around the equator. These
are the most important sources of biological diversity on earth.
For that reason, most biologists believe that the rapid
destruction of the tropical rain forests and the irretrievable
loss of the living species dying along with them, represent the
single most serious damage to nature now occurring."
SO HE’S DESTROYING IT
Yet it has been Gore’s short-sighted urging
for bio-fuels that has already resulted in massive deforestation
of the Amazon rain forest. In just the last six months of 2007,
a chunk of the rain forest the size of Rhode Island has fallen
to the flames of quick-buck developers who will replace those
virgin forests with sugar cane, soy or other bio-fuel crops.
And that’s not all. The rain forest is
perhaps the largest repository of carbon dioxide on the planet -
captured within the dense vegetation. With deforestation comes a
massive release of that carbon — last year accounting for fully
20% of all current carbon emissions!
"How utterly ironic that
the Chicken-Little
of Carbon, Al Gore, is largely responsible
for what may be the most massive
release of carbon from a single source
in the history of
mankind..."
How utterly ironic that The Chicken-Little of
Carbon, Al Gore, is largely responsible for what may be the most
massive release of carbon from a single source in the history of
mankind - and he’s just getting started.
One has to wonder when Gore is going to come
clean with America, yet even now he may have to get in line
behind other pandering politicians who certainly do not want to offend
anybody in the great corn (and pivotal election) state of Iowa this year.
Iowa’s ethanol production is approaching 2
billion gallons annually and many of those corn farmers are
becoming the new Jed Clampets of this decade. Don’t tell them to
cut back on ethanol production if you want to win their vote.
The law of unintended consequences assures
disastrous results for those meddling in global affairs without
sufficient foresight — no matter how well intended or
politically correct the motives of the meddlers.
Not so long ago, in a November, 2000 in a
stump speech in Kissimmee Florida, Al Gore said, "Everyone in
Tampa Bay knows that Florida depends on clean beaches and clean
air. While my opponent refuses to take a clear stand on this, I
will. So let me pledge to you again, I will ban all new oil and
gas drilling off of the coast of Florida and California."
Eight years later, we are beginning to see
the unintended consequences of this foolish policy. We sit back
and watch the Chinese and the Russians drill for the same oil - our oil - as gas
prices reach towards $5.00 per gallon. Thanks to Gore and others
of his ilk, the same short-sighted eco-crazy policies that keep
us from drilling our own oil have created a regulatory climate
so dense that not a single refinery has been built in this
country since the 70’s. And we wonder at $5 per gallon?
"But the growing failure of ethanol
may be
only a minor consequence
compared to what we have to look
forward to with future Al Gore
mistakes. "
Consider if Al Gore is as wrong on climate
change as he was on ethanol. Will we spend trillions to replace
infrastructure unnecessarily? Will the changes do infinitely more harm than
good as a result of unintended consequences? Will we make
changes so destructive to our economy and the American way of
life to where we can never come back?
Those earnest, groupie greenies surrounding
Gore may be true-believers concerned with nothing more than
saving the planet. Yet elitist Gore, at least, sees himself as a
messiah — so elevated above us mere mortals that we should not
question his Tennessee home consuming 23 times the average
American home's
electrical consumption or his globe-trotting in private
jets — as he lambastes average Americans for their SUVs.
Gore, unconflicted by errors in calculation
and application so serious that they may impact our
great-grandchildren, charges on undaunted, accruing a net worth
reported in excess of $100 million trading billions in "carbon credit" funny-money
while charging $175 thousand per speech.
"Don't be the last one to
figure this out!" - Ron Manera, Editor
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