Sent to you by Jay via Google Reader:
I love all those "green future" commercials companies like Exxon and BP ("Beyond Petroleum") run. They never fail to get a chuckle out of me, no matter how often I see them.
I can't remember who is responsible for the latest one in which an "engineer" and a "teacher" (both actors, of course) speak almost simultaneously in split screen. They both talk about how we need to get off of carbon-based fuels like petroleum. I've only seen it once — and will likely see it 100 times more — but my initial guffaw line was when the "teacher," in exasperation, wonders why our cars aren't running on compost already! … or something.
We here at The Heartland Institute have labored mightily over the last several years to expose the "green economy" scam. So it's nice to see the MSM — at least in Britain — get wise and report on it. The November 10 Independent of London reports a story with the headline: "Biofuel plan will cause rise in carbon emissions." You don't say!
The first four graphs of the story lay it out in refreshingly clear terms [emphasis mine]:
Britain's promise to more than double its use of biofuels by 2020 is "significantly" adding to worldwide carbon emissions, the Government admitted yesterday. Britain is signed up to a European guarantee to source 10 per cent of its transport fuel from renewable sources, such as biofuels, within the next 10 years.
But ministers have said that the policy is proving counter-productive and the greenhouse emissions associated with biofuels are substantially greater than the savings. They are now urging the European Commission to rethink the plan. The admission coincides with a major study published this week which concludes that biofuels will create an extra 56 million tons of CO2 per year – the equivalent of 12 to 26 million cars on Europe's roads by 2020.
This is because Europe will need to cultivate an area somewhere between the size of Belgium and the Republic of Ireland with biofuels to meet the target, which can only be done through land conversion – and more controversially, deforestation. The work will be on such a scale that the carbon released from the vegetation, trees and soil will be far greater than those given off by fossil fuels they are designed to replace.
The study, from the Institute for European Environmental Policy, found that far from being 35 to 50 per cent less polluting, as required by the European Directive, the extra biofuels will be twice as bad for the environment.
Read the whole thing. It's a clinic on science and reality smashing into "good intentions." Those "scare quotes" are intentional, because I think the record of ClimateGate clearly shows that the intentions of the global climate agenda are far from "good." The deforestation of an area in Europe the size of Ireland to put up "green" crops is a small price to pay to feel superior to we troglodytes in the United States, right? I await the justification from the folks who instituted these mandates to explain how such measures will save the planet.
This is yet another reason why it's a shame that Prop 23 didn't pass in California. The voters of the former Golden State condemned their economy to stagnation because they believed the fantasy that a major industrial economy can simply state that they will "go green" and (1) it will not result in economic disaster and (2) it's even a "good" thing for the environment.
The latest study by the Institute for European Environmental Policy is but one bit of evidence of the folly.
(HT: Andrew Stuttaford at NRO)
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