RSSAre Greenie Weenies Ethanol Dreams Environmental Unsound?
J.J. Jackson* | September 23, 2007 |
People that like to think they are holier than thou because they drive and electric car or use ethanol as fuel need to get their heads out of the clouds because the reality is that the electricity for their hybrids comes from powerplants (i.e. all they are doing is shifting the point of emissions) and their precious corn for ethanol requires the use of already scare water resources to grow. The problem with the “green” movement is that they are so disgusted by the thought of oil that they are willing to put blinders on to ignore the fact that they themselves are still polluting to maintain their own lifestyles and sometimes doing it more so than before.
ROME — Not so long ago, you could feel complacent - smug even - about your little greenish exertions. You traded your SUV for a smaller set of wheels. You bought compact florescent bulbs and dragged the old push mower out of storage. You approved of ethanol and other biofuels and vowed to buy them whenever possible. Okay, there wasn’t a lot of sacrifice involved. But you could feel a tad superior to your fossil-fuel-slurping neighbours.You might feel a little less smug today. You might even feel guilty. Why? Because biofuels aren’t living up to their hype. By now, it’s obvious they won’t cure the planet of its oil addiction or take the edge off global warming - two of the alleged advantages touted by the biofuel industry. Biofuels may even be harming the planet. The oil industry was never keen on biofuels, but you never believed the oil industry. Now no less a sober authority than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says biofuels - notably ethanol, a fuel worshipped by governments, farmers and refiners in Canada, the United States and parts of Europe - might be a con job on a massive scale.An OECD report released this week said biofuels may “offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal.” It said the vast amounts of land devoted to biofuel production harms biodiversity and pollutes the environment with herbicides and pesticides. (A July report put out by the OECD and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said rising biofuel demand is “underpinning higher agriculture prices” and will lead to a “food-versus-fuel” debate).
The fact that the ethanol industry in the states requires massive subsidies of government money to even exist should tell you first about its profitability and second about it’s demand. The only thing that governments need to subsidize are services that people have already decided they don’t want but that politicians decide that they should have.
Can we reduce our pollution? Sure. But when government, spurred on by do-gooders who think they know more than everyone else, and are really not all that bright, is the source you can count on waste, fraud and a long road to hoe before we realize that not much has changed.
But at least we’ll feel good about it right?
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2 Responses to “Are Greenie Weenies Ethanol Dreams Environmental Unsound?”
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Um, as one of the co-authors of the “OECD report” that you site (actually, a discussion draft for a meeting of the OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development), I think that you are not accurately characterizing the environmental community’s views on biofuels. While I grant you there are still a few environmental NGOs out there who actively push biofuels (and then only second-generation biofuels), most of the momentum for government subsidies for them comes from the agricultural community and from people who see imported oil as the No. 1 threat to western economies.
If you want to read more, I encourage you to check out our latest report, just released, which can be downloaded from:
http://www.globalsubsidies.org/article.php3?id_article=35&var_mode=calcul
Hey Ron, note that he said “Greenie Weenies” not the “environmental community”. Big difference.
He is accurately characterizing the views of the “Greenie Weenies” which are radical (or dumb) Marxists who want to use environmental issues to secure power.
Why you would even say what you said when he is discussing these people and not the environmental community as a whole (which I believe based on talking to him many times he actually supports conservation, etc, but on an INDIVIDUAL choice level) just confounds me.
Maybe if you’d like to learn more you should read here:
http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/category/environmental-marxists/
and here:
http://www.americanconservativedaily.com/category/global-warming/