>What makes me uncomfortable with your message, and Jake's ongoing campaign as well, is the fixation with economic issues and apparent lack of concern about environmental ones.

I arrived at my position by focusing on the actual results of environmental policies. Economic, human and regulatory impacts matter to me, not intentions. There are awful impacts upon all 3 from environmental policies enacted without proper comprehensive vetting. My 2 examples, DDT and ethanol, are in my mind the 2 biggest disasters because of their devastating impacts on the actual life (and death) of tens of millions of real people. The economic impact of banning DDT was negligible in this context. The economic impact of ethanol is directly related to the deaths through starvation and world-wide commodity distortion due to enacted US policy. Where's the outrage? Why aren't the champions of these causes and their political enablers being held accountable? The results are summarily ignored, suppressed and/or spun in the name of good intentions.

>You make it sound like everything that is aimed at preserving the planet we live on is some bleeding heart liberal cause with no merit. One doesn't have to take every environmental initiative at 100% face value to be discomfited by that. This is the only planet we've got.

This is patently false for me as I regard farmers as the greatest environmentalists on the planet and they tend to lean right. Of course they're not the advocates of the "cause". Instead, they too busy being productive. ;)

That said, the champions of the "cause" do tend to come from a left-leaning bent which invariably leads to their solutions having a "governmental control" aspect. This makes me dubious of their motivations. How is it that every single environmental "problem" requires more tax, more regulation and/or less liberty to "solve" the issue? I'm sure that the true believers and the everyday green-leaning individual are well meaning and intentioned in regards to preserving what they honestly believe is a threatened planet. However, they, while possibly not realizing the consequences of their causes, are implicitly or explicitly backing the champions whose desire to control the populace is currently fully invested both politically and economically in the green movement.

Take a close look at the Goracle's op-ed this weekend. See anything that could reinforce my opinion?

Hint : From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.

>Do we really want to do things we know are bad for the earth for no better reason than short term profit? Mighty short sighted IMO.

A. No one is suggesting this red herring.
B. To the bolded above : Are you so sure about what "we know"? The earth has a funny way of demonstrating just how little "we know".

>>Hi Grady,
>>
>>Thanks to Jake. Well said.
>>One can't stress his points enough. My point would be: what enables a high standard of living? Efficiency. So when you subsidize various energy producing schemes, you may create huge inefficiencies, and that kills everyone's standard of living. There is plenty of capital to be invested on worthy ideas. 60 minutes told the Bloom Box story a week ago Sunday and how they got 400 million from investors. The electric car company in China, BYD, has Warren Buffet and one of my friends investing. But coal is still a quite efficient way to produce electricity as mentioned here...
>>http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100210Lindzen/f.htm
>>The power density for solar and wind is so poor I don't see them ever contributing much. If you're not thinking nuclear, then you better think fossil fuel. Those are only choices where the standard of living isn't diminished.
>>
>>>
>>>BS or not, I'd still like to see us and reduce the use of coal and move toward the use of more solar power/wind and batteries for power and transportation.