All hail, Al Gore!!

Here's the kind of news that will have you shaking your head:

Anyone who opposes ethanol subsidies, as these columns have for decades, comes to appreciate the wisdom of St. Jude. But now that a modern-day patron saint—St. Al of Green—has come out against the fuel made from corn and your tax dollars, maybe this isn't such a lost cause.

Welcome to the college of converts, Mr. Vice President. "It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

No kidding, and Mr. Gore said he knows from experience: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President."

Mr. Gore's mea culpa underscores the degree to which ethanol has become a purely political machine: It serves no purpose other than re-electing incumbents and transferring wealth to farm states and ethanol producers. Nothing proves this better than the coincident trajectories of ethanol and Mr. Gore's career.

Oh, how nice. Mr. Gore now sees the light while the American taxpayer gets to foot the bill for years to come for another environmental pipe dream gone sour. Somehow I doubt that this new revelation by Gore will spur Greens to be a little more skeptical about adopting and advocating every earth saving idea that comes down the pike. Environmentalism is a religion that does not tolerate free thought or dissent.

It’s not easy being Green

On Friday, the Obama administration declared that carbon dioxide (including five other industrial gases) was a grave danger to human health and a threat to the environment. The regulatory agency that will be in charge of crafting environmental regulation will be the Environmental Protection Agency. However, I surmise that it will probably be Congress that creates some sort of all encompassing environmental legislation. This is the moment that environmental groups were waiting for and it is for them a major step into crafting a "green" economy. This is huge. This ruling means that everything that you consume or purchase will essentially become more expensive--EVERYTHING. Congratulations, my dear taxpayers, our nation is now off to a new economic experiment that will never pay off and will bring grimaces of pain when citizens have to settle the bill.

By the way, the "green" experiment of ethanol hasn't worked out well at all yet our government will continue to subsidize it till someone notices the huge money pit that it is. Despite the fact that ethanol plants are closing all over the country, our government wants to mandate even more ethanol use. Of course, this means that the taxpayer remains on the hook to benefit ethanol producers and the states that have them.

Conference call with API

Yesterday, I participated in a blogger conference call with the American Petroleum Institute. The conference was very informative. One of the issues that stood out in my mind was the issue of ethanol subsidies and the cost incurred by taxpayers particularly now since gasoline prices have plummeted quite a bit over the last several months. Right now the cost of producing ethanol and bringing it to market is simply not cost effective but because of congressional mandates, the American taxpayer basically props up an industry that can't compete with gasoline. The question that always sticks in my mind about ethanol is how long before this bad idea of subsidizing ethanol gets undone by our government? Once a government mandate starts, no matter how bad it is, it takes years to undo it--at a substantial cost to the taxpayer.

Moderator:
Jane Van Ryan, Senior Communications Manager, API

Speakers:
Lou Pugliaresi, President, Energy Policy Research Foundation
Rayola Dougher, Senior Economic Advisor, API
Ron Planting, Manager of Statistics, API

Listen to the conference call below:

The danger of subsidizing renewable energy

Reason.tv has a great video on the fiasco that Bio-fuels made from corn ethanol has brought on the world.

When government ends up subsidizing an industry or a program that ends up having poor unintended consequences, like we have experienced with corn ethanol, my trail test to those that favor deep government subsidies for projects that they deem essential to society is what happens if that program or policy turns out to not work as initially expected? Since Democrats, environmentalists, and even some Republicans continuously call for subsidizing “renewable” energy or “alternative” energy, what happens if government picks a loser and ends up wasting billions of taxpayer funds chasing a viable technology? I find it difficult to imagine that many of these groups would be comfortable with such a waste.

Now that many national and international organizations and government bodies have acknowledged the problems with corn ethanol, how long will it take our government to fix the problem? I bet that it will take at least a decade before subsidies for corn ethanol bio-fuels are reversed.

Trade barriers blamed for high food prices

It’s becoming more popular in the U.S. to consider trade protectionism in the name of “fair” trade and alleged worker protection; The Democrats have justified a block a of free trade deal with Colombia under such dubious reasons. Yet, even the U.N. has recently admitted that trade barriers, and in a particular-- food prices, have an adverse effect on world food prices and the world’s poor. In the long run, trade protectionism and government subsidies to hand picked industries do more harm than good.

Anti-American protests and Food riots

From CSM: Amnesty International Report released Tuesday alleged that Islamist militants, as well as US-backed Ethiopian and Somali government troops, are committing widespread atrocities against civilians in the capital, Mogadishu. And a recent US strike against what it says was an Al Qaeda leader in Somalia has sparked further protests.

Comment: Food riots and anti-American protests are raging through Somalia. Inexplicably, while the average American is consumed by American Idol and gasoline prices, there are reports that U.S. backed government forces are committing atrocities in Mogadishu. Additionally, a recent U.S. bombing attack on suspected Al Qaeda militants has caused the sort of collateral damage that we can ill afford: This is yet another American foreign policy disaster in the making. Do not doubt that our ethanol subsidy to big agriculture and rising oil prices have a hand in all of this. I haven’t seen a whiff of reporting on any of this on my local news channel and I suspect there will be none until something terrible happens to our soldiers or American civilians operating in the region.

The reality of ethanol

HT: Mark J. Perry

Bio-Fuels are bad for environment.

From:The Christian Science Monitor

Scientists at the University of British Columbia and the University of Wisconsin looked at the energy bill President Bush signed in December and its goal of producing 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022. They analyzed the impact it could have on nutrients from farm runoff. Nutrients in the runoff flow down the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers and feed algae in the Gulf. When the algae die, they decompose, which uses up oxygen in the water. Low-oxygen waters are fatal to organisms like shellfish.

Comment: Government subsidies encourage farmers to use every square inch of arable land, even if it comes right up to river banks. In order to grow corn, farmers use loads of pesticides. To cultivate the crop, CO2 spewing farm machinery is used. And as was noted in Part one of this series, ethanol production uses up an extraordinary amount of fresh water. The truth of the matter is that ethanol ends up being worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Of course, none of the above problems stopped our government from increasing the U.S. mandate to 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, a fivefold increase from a mere two years ago. Interestingly, the “greens” that spent years pushing the idea of bio-fuels, and in particular ethanol, have been rather silent on the damning effects of the fuel. It’s almost as if they wish to disassociate themselves from a bad idea.

The danger of Bio-fuels! Part one.

The environmental movement has been pushing the use of Bio-fuels for years and they have succeeded in convincing enough politicians in Washington that it is in America's benefit to create incentives for it's production. Well, they got what they asked for with massive subsidies to produce ethanol going to large agricultural corporations all over the country. One of the unforeseen consequences (remember the Law of Unintended Consequences) of ethanol production is the massive amount of water that is used up during production. See article in The Economist