Part 1

Many times for over a year I’ve decried the foolish headlong government plunge into ethanol. Basically anytime the government anoints a winner in the marketplace the government will be proven wrong for any number of reasons. One of the many predictable outcomes of increased governmental support for ethanol, higher food prices, has become a reality.

The Washington Post had a good column recently aptly titled “Ethanol’s Failed Promise” that outlined the many flaws with biofuels. I was particularly amused by the line, “Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons.” Ohhhh, the liberal’s lament. It’s always about good intentions with them, not sound, well reasoned policy. Any degree of government interference is justifiable if your heart is pure.

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to use precious arable land for fuel production instead of food production while there are still people starving in the world?

Part 2

On a related topic, I recently wrote that John McCain’s proposal to eliminate the federal fuel tax for the summer revealed his lack of adherence to the global warming creed. Eliminating the tax would encourage more consumption of fuel, which is exactly the opposite of what a devout global warmitarian would want. Now the Wall Street Journal has come to the same conclusion. They state that proposals such as McCain’s make “a hash out of the climate-change policies that the candidate purports to favor.”

If such politicians were honestly concerned with the survival of our species their recourse would be simple and easy to make: artificially force up fuel prices. Tax it. Regulate it. Bludgeon it to death. Instead what we get are politicians who seem to be eager to just gain more power and control since their contradictory cocktail of policies belie their tenuous belief in the man-made global warming faith.

Update: More on McCain’s hypocrisy from Newsweek:

[A]ttorney and former GM exec Frank Dunne finds the climate-change hawk’s call for a gas-tax holiday “intellectually dishonest.”

[Tom Kloza, energy analyst with the Oil Price Information Service] goes a bit further, calling a gas-tax holiday “caca.” “It represents pandering. You’re not leveling with the American public,” says Kloza.

• Politics and science don’t mix
• A global warmitarian loses faith
• Global warming is racist
• Global warming could be causing some glaciers to grow
• It’s bad - must be global warming

This entry was posted by Brian on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Energy, Environment, Government, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.