Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so.
The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of American grain production is now subsidised for conversion into biofuel. Jeremy Paxman pleaded the cause of this latest green wheeze on Monday's Newsnight, while the United Nations food expert, Jean Ziegler, screamed for it to stop: "Children are dying ... It is a crime."
The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, said this week: "The government has consistently stressed that biofuels are only worth supporting if they deliver genuine environmental benefits." Yet she must know that, at present, the opposite is the case. Kelly pleaded that rescinding her policy might impede investment and "weaken our influence over the direction of EU policy". She did not mention biofuels' threat to rainforests, food self-sufficiency and global warming generally, through needing costly fertiliser and road transport. Nor did she mention the role in her decision of such lobbies as the British Association for Biofuels and Oils, and the National Farmers' Union.
The RTFO is the latest in a series of policies, proselytised by the green movement and then commandeered by commercial lobbies, which fit a pattern of irrationality worthy of Moral Re-Armament. Until recently, most greenery has seemed no more than a feelgood parlour game. Now it is getting serious.
I have tried to follow the global warming debate, and will admit that it has changed my mind on occasions. I was once a sceptic on nuclear power and genetically modified foods. Security made the former expensive, and ignorance made the latter suspect, vulnerable to such greed-motivated cul-de-sacs as the "terminator gene" (increasing output but for just one harvest). I could also see the virtue of harnessing wind and waves, and seeking new ways of using the sun's rays, either directly or through plant photosynthesis.
I am wiser now. As the major premise of the debate has shifted to global warming, so has the balance of argument. Wherever one stands on the spectrum of climate complacency versus alarm, burning carbon should be discouraged. But as public money starts to flow, so financial interest pollutes debate.
The British government has been persuaded by the wind turbine manufacturers to commit a third of its annual renewables subsidy to this uniquely inefficient energy source, advertising over hill and dale the cabinet's horror of making a decision on nuclear power. When this was put to Tony Blair by a Commons committee early in his second parliament, he replied jokily: "Would you want a nuclear plant in your constituency?" This appeared to be the sum total of his thinking on the topic.
Ten years after Blair came to office, the government still lacks the courage to make a decision, scared of what the anti-nuclear lobby might say. Such Christian Science greenery implies that the world would be better dead than with one split atom on its surface. Nuclear power may be expensive but as the former chief scientist, Sir David King, wrote recently, "the dangers of climate change are far worse".
The same applies to genetically modified foods. It is clear that modification, which is as old as botany, has side-effects. But increased food productivity is so patently a good thing that to ban GM from European imports, and thus from Africa, is beyond perverse. Increased Indian and Chinese consumption is sucking the world dry of grain at just the time when the GM ban is denying the developing world the swiftest path to higher productivity - and at a time when supply is curbed by biofuel substitution.
These various green policies have established a lethal pincer movement on world food production. As the Oxford economist Paul Collier points out in his book The Bottom Billion, Africa has been subjected by European governments to one form of "befuddled romanticism" after another, from campaigns against GM foods and low-wage produce to "save the peasant" farm reform. Africa, says Collier, has less commercial agriculture than it did at the end of the age of empire, half a century ago.
While antagonism to science merely impedes progress, antagonism to economics is regressive. American subsidies to ethanol fuel are not just causing "tortilla riots" but costing American taxpayers a staggering $5.5bn a year. Biofuel tankers are circling the globe, burning gasoline and chasing subsidies. They have joined carbon emissions certificates among the world's greatest trading scams.
If I have changed my mind, I am not sure the same applies to many greens. I have rarely encountered so much fanaticism and blind faith. Did those demanding fuel subsidies not realise that palm oil would wipe out rainforests and that ethanol from corn would use as much carbon as it saved? Did those pleading for wind farms really think they could ever substitute for nuclear power; or those wanting eco-towns not realise they would just add to car emissions? Did they not understand that, once the tap of public money is turned on, lobbyists will ensure it is never turned off - however harmful?
If all these fancy subsidies and market manipulations were withdrawn tomorrow and government action confined to energy-saving regulation, I am convinced the world would be a cheaper and a safer place, and the poor would not be threatened with starvation.
Just now, for reasons not all of which are "green", commodity prices are soaring. Leave them. Send food parcels to the starving, but let demand evoke supply and stop curbing trade. The marketplace is never perfect, but in this matter it could not be worse than government action. Playing these games has so far made a few people very rich at the cost of the taxpayer. Now the cost is in famine and starvation. This is no longer a game.
#3
It's not like we or the Brits are using African grain to make biofuels. We're just trying to be more self-sufficient. United Nations food expert Jean Ziegler should go to Africa (Zimbabwe, for instance) and teach them farming so they can be more self-sufficient too. I know, Farmin B. Hard, but the U.N. would surely prefer to "teach a man to fish" than simply give him fish. Right, Jean? Jean? Hello?
"Africa, says Collier, has less commercial agriculture than it did at the end of the age of empire, half a century ago."
That is pathetic.
#4
Never have I seen a *radical environmental* idea go so wrong so quickly. I didn't even know what ethanol was just 4-5 years ago, and now, we've seen the *effect* of tinkering with the markets to where we're paying more for everything (including meat, which are affected by the ethanol craze).
Enough of the insanity, especially when it won't make a *hill of bean's* worth of difference.
Posted by: BA ||
04/16/2008 16:04 Comments ||
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Funny, I thought the left wanted to decrease human consumption of high fructose corn syrup. But as this all comes from the left, it's not as if it has to make any sense.
#10
We've got enough food for ourselves in the West. This is caused by the Arabs and Russians playing us for rubes on the oil market. Let them eat oil, we'll keep the soybeans.
For a while now, the Obamaphiles have insisted that their candidate represents a profound break with the past. No more culture wars. No more re-litigating the 1960s, in Obamas own words. But what about re-litigating the 1980s?
Theres always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness thats hard to pinpoint. But I think Ive got it: Theyre self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which were to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.
For those too young to remember, yuppie was shorthand for young urban professionals think Michael J. Fox as Alex P. Keaton in the TV series Family Ties who allegedly represented the collapse of 60s values and the triumph of 80s greed. Yuppies sold their souls for a BMW and a condo. See also, e.g.,Warren Zevon.
Ironically, the biggest complaints about yuppie materialism came from self-loathing liberal yuppies like the Obamas.
The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to 80s-style resentments and political assumptions. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
04/16/2008 14:39 ||
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Zevon ref? Mike, you rock. I miss Warren
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/16/2008 20:29 Comments ||
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Im not writing this just because I grew up in a house with a gun, a strong Catholic faith, an immigrant father, brothers with anti-illegal immigrant sentiments and a passion for bowling. (My bowling trophy was one of my most cherished possessions.)
My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values. Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they werent bitter; they were bonding. They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket.
Behind closed doors in San Francisco, elitisms epicenter, Barack Obama showed his elitism, attributing the emotional, spiritual and cultural values of working-class, lunch pail Pennsylvanians to economic woes. . . .
His mother got her Ph.D. in anthropology, studying the culture of Indonesia. And as Obama has courted white, blue-collar voters in Deer Hunter and Rocky country, he has often appeared to be observing the odd habits of the colorful locals, resisting as the natives try to fatten him up like a foie gras goose, sampling Pennsylvania beer in a sports bar with his tie tight, awkwardly accepting bowling shoes as a gift from Bob Casey, examining the cheese and salami at the Italian Market here as intriguing ethnic artifacts, purchasing Utz Cheese Balls at a ShopRite in East Norriton and quizzing the women working in a chocolate factory about whether they could possibly really like the sugary doodads.
He hasnt pulled a John Kerry and asked for a Philly cheese steak with Swiss yet, but he has maintained a regal What do the simple folk do to help them escape when theyre blue? bearing, unable to even feign Main Street cred. . . .
What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that hes gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis. (Just as Dukakis chatted about Belgian endive, Obama chatted about Whole Foods arugula in Iowa.)
Obama did not grow up in cosseted circumstances. . . . But his exclusive Hawaiian prep school and years in the Ivy League made him a charter member of the elite, along with the academic experts he loves to have in the room. As Colbert pointed out, the other wonky Ivy League lawyer in the primary just knows how to condescend better. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
04/16/2008 11:13 ||
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#1
Helpful hint, Mo. When taking shots at people about their "elitism", do not use phrases like "autos-da-fe'", or use "The Philadelphia Story" as a reference point.It kinda defeats the purpose.
Not a bad effort. But you might send a memo to Pinchy and ask him to check the hallucinogen level in the Times water supply. It appears to be running low.
#3
suddenly all of the liberals are staking their bona fides with guns, bibles and bowling. LOL! I'm always amazed at how the Hillary hacks are such little parrots that they can only speak and talk in Hillary approved talking points.
If we take our cue from the Grand Parrot Modo, apparently the new talking points say that elitism is out; guns, bibles, bowling, and whiskey are in.
#2
Bush probably calculates that it will do no harm.
That is, he is an oilman. He knows energy. He also knows that this MMGW stuff is bulldada.
Remember when the MMGW crowd was getting up to demand ethanol. Well, sometimes the best way to kill an idea dead is to encourage it along. And that is what Bush did. Ethanol has quickly turned into a nightmare.
So what if Bush embraces MMGW? He is a lame duck. If the MMGW crowd are right, Bush will be the first president, a Republican, to endorse it. If they are wrong, then he can shrug it off--it isn't going to be a part of his legacy.
Of course, if MMGW is very wrong, they still won't be able to blame Bush for it, because everyone associates it with Algore.
Bush could cite the successes so far (e.g., 200% increase in wind power during his administration, substantial decrease in methane emissions, new emission standards for diesel trucks) and urge Congress to pass provisions of an earlier submitted bill regarding nuclear energy.
Bush could also cite the emission trends since 2000 that show that the Euros have increase their per capital emissions and we have decreased them.
Bush could also note that the Chicoms are now the biggest single source of CO2.
#4
if manmade CO2-induced global warming is real Kyoto and all its spinoffs aren't going to do a damn thing to stop it.
I guess they were right, Gore _did_ win in 2000, and it's just taken us 8 years to find out. I wonder what's under the next layer of latex mask, Leonard Nimoy?
#5
Says that my Tax Freedom Day is April 18. Kansas is expecting snow this evening, about 3 weeks after the first day of Spring...does that mean that if we enact GW taxes my tax freedom day gets pushed back till March 9th?
#8
I read somewhere that he said the goal was to halt increases in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 or so. If the US switches to nuclear and can make some reasonable but non-detrimental changes to the energy sources for the transportation sector by then, it'll probably happen that way. I see it as an almost no-lose situation for W.
#9
Except the greenies will never allow Nuclear - no matter what or the opening up and ANWR. They would rather have us decrease our standard of living and our economy. It makes it much easier for them to implement their socialism.
#10
Crazy, I think you are wrong. For some of them, you are, no doubt correct. They want everyone but themselves to live in huts, or better yet just die. But most people are going to realize we need energy, that coal, oil and natural gas-fired power plants are not the way of the future (at least now they aren't) and that nuclear is the viable alternative. This will be reinforced when new nuc plants currently getting licensed come on line and no one dies.
#11
I'll beleive it when they do NOT sue and slow down construction planning (much less contruction itself).
Enviros do NOT care about the human cost, they seem to treat mankind as a parasite.
c.f. DDT, Rachel Carson's blatant lies, and the propagation of said lies that led to unnecessary deaths due to malaria in the MILLIONS.
Enviros rival Pol Pot, Hitler and Stalin as Mass Murderers.
Antrhopogenic Global Warming is a HOAX. Those espousing it should be ostracized for fearmongering, and eventually shot for enabling totalitarianism by the enviros.
You know the nutroots can't resist. You know they want the White House and more besides. And Obama is their man ...
Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.
Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."
The question was inspired by a recent report by ABC News, confirmed by the Associated Press, that high-level officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and former Cabinet secretaries Colin Powell, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, among others, met in the White House and discussed the use of waterboarding and other torture techniques on terrorism suspects.
I mentioned the report in my question, and said "I know you've talked about reconciliation and moving on, but there's also the issue of justice, and a lot of people -- certainly around the world and certainly within this country -- feel that crimes were possibly committed" regarding torture, rendition, and illegal wiretapping. I wanted to know how whether his Justice Department "would aggressively go after and investigate whether crimes have been committed."
Here's his answer, in its entirety:
What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.
So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.
The bottom line is that: Obama sent a clear signal that -- unlike impeachment, which he's ruled out and which now seems a practical impossibility -- he is at the least open to the possibility of investigating potential high crimes in the Bush White House.
Nope, not turning the page, is he ...
To many, the information that waterboarding -- which the United States has considered torture and a violation of law in the past -- was openly planned out in the seat of American government is evidence enough to at least start asking some tough questions in January 2009.
And so wonderfully phrased besides. "Nobody is above the law", but the nutroots shall decide the law, thank you very much.
Not only is it a nice, 'moral' soundbite, but it means a nutroot nirvana of needless nattering, nagging and nasty niggling to needle knuckleheads into 'nnoyed indignation. Nuff.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Freaky. I was just discussing politix yesterday with a friend, and we agreed that the subpoenas would start flowing even before the end of the last inaugural ball of a Donk presidency.
#2
Nice bit of alliteration there, Steve. Seems like you could've worked Nancy (Pelosi) in there, somewhere...
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/16/2008 6:25 Comments ||
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#3
Deval Patrick is probably writing up the paperwork right now during his breaks from writing his autobiography. Because that's the job I think he expects from his buddy Barack.
A story appearing in the St. Louis, Missouri Globe-Democrat in 1895 says:
William Lyons, 25, a levee hand, was shot in the abdomen yesterday evening at 10 o'clock in the saloon of Bill Curtis, at Eleventh and Morgan Streets, by Lee Sheldon, a carriage driver. Lyons and Sheldon were friends and were talking together. Both parties, it seems, had been drinking and were feeling in exuberant spirits. The discussion drifted to politics, and an argument was started, the conclusion of which was that Lyons snatched Sheldon's hat from his head. The latter indignantly demanded its return. Lyons refused, and Sheldon withdrew his revolver and shot Lyons in the abdomen. When his victim fell to the floor Sheldon took his hat from the hand of the wounded man and coolly walked away. He was subsequently arrested and locked up at the Chestnut Street Station. Lyons was taken to the Dispensary, where his wounds were pronounced serious. Lee Sheldon is also known as 'Stag' Lee.[1]
Lyons eventually died of his injuries. Sheldon was tried, convicted, and served prison time for this crime. This otherwise unmemorable crime is remembered in a song. In some older versions of the song, the name of the other party is given as "Billy Deslile" or "De Lion".
[edit] Stagger Lee as archetype
Immortalized in song, Stagger Lee has become an archetype, the embodiment of a tough-guy black man -- one who is sly, streetwise, cool, lawless, amoral, potentially violent, and who defies often white authority.[3]
Author and music critic Greil Marcus explicitly ties the Stagger Lee archetype to Sly Stone and his album There's a Riot Goin' On in his book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music.
There is speculation that "Stag O Lee" songs predated even the 1895 incident, and Lee Sheldon may have gotten his nickname from earlier folk songs. Other sources say that black roustabouts on Mississippi River docks were called "stack o lees" as they would stack cargo on the lee side of the docks. The first published version of the song was done by folklorist John Lomax in 1910. The song was well known in African American communities along the lower Mississippi River by the 1910s.
A 1959 variation, credited as "traditional", as originally recorded and performed by Lloyd Price, goes:
(intro) The night was clear, and the moon was yellow
And the leaves came tumblin' down. . .
I was standing on a corner
When I heard my bull dog bark
He was barking at the two men
Who were gambling in the dark
It was Stagger Lee and Billy
Two men who gambled late
Stagger Lee threw a seven
Billy swore that he threw eight
Stagger Lee told Billy
"I can't let you go with that
You won all o' my money
And my brand new Stetson hat."
Stagger Lee started off goin'
Down that railroad track
He said "I can't get you Billy but
Don't be here when I come back"
(bridge)
Stagger Lee, he went home
And he got his forty-four
Said "I'm going down to the barroom
Just to pay that debt I owe"
Stagger Lee went to the barroom
And he stood across the barroom door
He said "Nobody move"
And he pulled his forty-four
Then Billy he cried "Stag, oh Stag,
Please don't take my life
I got three little children
And a very sickly wife"
Stagger Lee... shot Billy
Oh, he shot that poor boy so bad
Till the bullet came through Billy
And it broke the bartender's glass.
#5
Gee I thought that after the 200220042006 ?2008? elections that the entire administration would be indicted? Actually it would kind of fun to watch Dick Cheney dissect a Donk AG that drank too much KooAid. Picture Condi (verbally) bitch slapping Deval Patrick?
#1
This guy calls Olmert a hawk. If Olmert is the closest thing to a hawk Israel can come up with, Israel is in as bad trouble as Spengler says they are. Otherwise, Spengler's just spouting hot air.
Posted by: Thaimble Scourge of the Pixies4707 ||
04/16/2008 17:28 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, said this week: "The government has consistently stressed that biofuels are only worth supporting if they deliver genuine environmental benefits." Yet she must know that, at present, the opposite is the case. Kelly pleaded that rescinding her policy might impede investment and "weaken our influence over the direction of EU policy". She did not mention biofuels' threat to rainforests, food self-sufficiency and global warming generally, through needing costly fertiliser and road transport. Nor did she mention the role in her decision of such lobbies as the British Association for Biofuels and Oils, and the National Farmers' Union.
