Are alt energies harmful? UPDATED

:::UPDATE – Please read this excellent piece by Vaclev Klaus (President Czech Republic) on the very real dangers to freedom that accompany environmental alarmism.

What I see in Europe, the US and other countries is a powerful combination of irresponsibility and wishful thinking together with the strong belief in the possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project.

The man knows whereof he writes. No one is listening. That’s how we tumble headlong into a totalitarian mindset.

Read the whole thing. END UPDATE:::

The trend toward “clean” biofuels seems to be one that bears caution. We’re already seeing food prices soar (and the risk of hunger issues in third world countries worldwide) due to the rush to replace fossil fuels with grain.

Now a troubling story of biofuel pollution:

After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source.
[…]
According to the National Biodiesel Board, a trade group, biodiesel is nontoxic, biodegradable and suitable for sensitive environments, but scientists say that position understates its potential environmental impact.

“They’re really considered nontoxic, as you would expect,” said Bruce P. Hollebone, a researcher with Environment Canada in Ottawa and one of the world’s leading experts on the environmental impact of vegetable oil and glycerin spills.

“You can eat the stuff, after all,” Mr. Hollebone said. “But as with most organic materials, oil and glycerin deplete the oxygen content of water very quickly, and that will suffocate fish and other organisms. And for birds, a vegetable oil spill is just as deadly as a crude oil spill.”

Clearly, there ought to be some watchdogs keeping track of how the production and promotion of these fuels impacts environments and economies, and the lives of those doing the hard work of harvesting and conversion. Mere feel-goodism won’t cut it. We also need to know who is profiting from the push to biofuels, and whether those profits assist in the hype of the global warming “crisis” from which, seemingly, much profit may be derived with little real change in the carbon-footprints, travel and living habits of the profiteers.

CBS is reporting that Bill Clinton is connected, for example to an Ethanol probe in Brazil:

A team from Brazil’s Labor Ministry found “degrading” living conditions for 133 sugarcane workers employed by an ethanol company whose investors include former President Clinton and other high-profile financial players.

At five sites inspected, workers “complained they were suffering from hunger and cold, and all of the locations were overcrowded and with terrible sanitary conditions,” according to a statement issued Friday by Jaqueline Carrijo, who led the inspections last month.

The target of the probe, Brazil Renewable Energy Co., known as Brenco, apologized over the weekend and said it is fixing the problems at its rural operations, which turn sugarcane into ethanol.

Clinton’s connection is via an investment in Brenco by The Yucaipa Cos., a U.S.-based fund in which Clinton was a senior advisor until last year.

There are plenty of people who are still not convinced that global warming is man-made at all. It seems like we’re playing with the environment and economies and people’s lives for science that is unsettled. Is that really a good thing to do?

If this global “crisis” is really the “crisis” they say it is, wouldn’t we be seeing some drastic measures being taken to address it – beyond profitable biofuels – in order to help make an immediate difference in this “crisis” situation? Wouldn’t we be banning private jets, canceling rock concerts and film-making (all those klieg lights and explosions and limos!), just for a start?

And how about these political campaigns? We’ve got candidates flying all over the place – and the press following them – and no one is mentioning this big “crisis,” no one is campaigning as though it is a real situation, yet last Hanukkah it was suggested that if the observant Jews simply omitted one candle-lighting during that holy time, they would be helping to save the planet.

Gosh, it seems to me that a 5-year moratorium on private air travel, public music festivals and film-making should buy us a couple millennium at that rate. Politicians have the internets and mass media – do they really need to gallop around using jet fuel and diesel fuels when the planet is going to end in thirty years because of the terrible “crisis”?

In 2000, “manmade” global warming was a “crisis,” but not enough of one to require cleaner measures from China or India. In 2004, “manmade” global warming was a “crisis” but it did not really get talked about during the campaign. In 2008, “manmade” global warming is a “crisis,” but no one in power is acting like it is a crisis, no political campaign is significantly curbing its energy use, no candidate is talking about making significant lifestyle changes in the entertainment industry (which sucks up juice like nothing else and is the ultimate expendable frivolity). In a time of “real crisis,” they would, wouldn’t you think?

If “manmade” global warming was the insidious world-ender we’re being told, wouldn’t sports seasons be canceled to keep teams from flying all over the country for night games played under enormous wattage, before crowds of fuel-burning drivers? If the “crisis” was so acute, wouldn’t the Olympics be canceled until such time as the earth was saved and world-travel and crowd-filth were given the okay?

I’m all for being energy-smart; I’d love to have a house like President Bush’s ranch, which is a model of home energy conservation. But something’s just not making sense, here, you know? There is this glaring inconsistency between what the fear-mongers tell us and what is actually being done.

“Manmade” global warming hucksterism appears to be an emerging growth industry; it is making some people very rich and giving them power over lesser beings, and influence over governments, but the “crisis” it is serving seems like a very “convenient” one, a “crisis” that can be hauled out when it is politically expedient to do so, and put away when it is not.

The convenient “crisis” of “manmade” global warming still just seems like hoohah to me.