Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Saving the polar bears, starving the world

George Will has a great article in Newsweek titled "The Biofuels Follies" on the unintentional consequences of America's environmental policies. In short, they're killing the environment:

To avoid drilling for oil in ANWR's moonscape, the planet savers evidently prefer destroying forests, even though they absorb greenhouse gases. Will ethanol prevent more carbon-dioxide emissions than would have been absorbed by the trees cut down to clear land for the production of crops for ethanol? Be that as it may, governments mandating the use of biofuels are one reason for the global rise in food prices, which is driving demand for more arable land. That demand is driving the destruction of forests—and animal habitats. In Indonesia alone, 44 million acres have been razed to make way for production of palm oil.
As Will points out, even if the entire U.S. corn crop were to be converted to ethanol it would reduce gasoline use by a whopping 3.5%. Meanwhile, food prices around the world are already soaring.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And for God' sake, you fascist bastards, don't even THINK about nuclear power plants! (U Earth-hating, womyn-raping, baby-killing(oh wait, that's a GOOD thing), stein-raising phucks!)

Don't you remember 3-mile island?!?

Oh y-e-a-h-.... What ABOUT 3-mile island?!?

Anonymous said...

At the risk of using an old joke: more people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than from Three Mile Island.

Nuclear energy is greenhouse gas free and they can't build reactors fast enough in Europe and China.

Your comment is inscrutable.

Anonymous said...

Ich will eurer Lickspitttle sein, Herr Burns.