The Cow Problem … is Us
Yesterday, the Senate began what is expected to be a week-long, contentious debate over legislation to combat global warming by mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. You can read up on my post re the World Bank’s experiments with carbon credit trading to see how this is likely to pan out.
President Bush said that the measure amounted to "a huge spending bill fueled by tax increases" and that it "would impose roughly $6 trillion in new costs on the American economy."
It isn’t just that the alarmists are trumpeting climate model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are predicting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right, in order to justify costly policies to try to prevent global warming. The average person conflates alarmism with science – the Senate and House of Representatives being no exception. The results can be tremendously misguided and dangerous legislation.
Meanwhile, a U.N. FAO report states that cows (livestock) produce 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions – more than every car, truck and bus on earth! Yikes, we don’t need Cap and Trade / Carbon Credit legislation! We just need to quit drinking MILK!
I have an idea. How about if we start by installing special filters over the House and Senate to suck up and dispose of all the noxious hot air and other damaging gases emitted by our elected representatives? That would at least be a start.
The bottom line is that our elected representatives and the Presidential candidates – all of them -- haven’t got a clue as to how to effectively solve our energy and pollution problems. They are not showing true leadership, not a single one of them.
What we really need to do:
1) Get off our addiction to foreign oil by producing ethanol efficiently – from either switchgrass or sugar cane (as Brazil does).
2) End the costly corn subsidies to companies like Archer Daniels Midland. According to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, "ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30."
3) Drill for oil wherever we can find it, now. Even though we are already on the downside of “peak oil” – which experts say was around 1985, we can still help the problem by exploring for and finding our own oil.
4) Ramp up alternative energy production -- That means solar, wind energy, hydrogen, nuclear and other technological advances. The same morons who are screaming about how we are polluting ourselves into the next Jurassic Age are the ones who are saying we can’t drill for oil or bring on any new nuclear power plants. What a bunch of fyookin’ hypocrites! This is just one of those problems where you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Be serious Pete, drilling for oil will lead to serious environmental impact and be a drop in the barrel--too little too late.
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, allowing the economy to feel the squeeze of dwindling supply and exploding demand will lead to the only sustainable solution there is:
We will begin to get more efficient, and begin to collect energy from the freely available sources all around us, including solar, and kinetic energy.
The entire concept of fungible "fuel" is wrong, and the sooner we part with it, the sooner we can go back to the important business of being self involved and treating each other like shit.
@Pete, so you are saying you agree with 3 out of my 4 points. They drill for oil in the Middle East. Do you think we're going to stop them? We need to do all 4.
ReplyDeleteWell, let's say I agree with the 2.5 of your points.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right about stemming our addiction, but I think ethanol is a short sighted solution to that problem. Maybe I could be persuaded that it's an acceptable stop gap, but nothing more. I'd have to see the numbers to get even that far.
We're not going to stop them from drilling, we'll just make it less profitable by building nuclear power plants, and being smarter about our energy use and produce.
Overall, yes, I do agree with you. I think we need a multi-pronged strategy, and some long term and short term solutions in the mix.
I just really took exception to the notion of drilling even more oil domestically... to me that represents a step backward.
I say we bite the bullet now and suffer through the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energies, and we do it without flailing around and causing irreversible environmental damage.