Even the homeless in America use twice the amount of energy than the global average, according to a new study (PDF) from MIT.

Think about that: you could sleep on the streets, or become a Buddhist monk, and still not be able to reduce your carbon footprint to a level deemed necessary by climate change activists.  And as the study points out, reducing energy usage to at or below the global average "is not obtainable for the average American on a voluntary basis".  I probably don't have to spell out the policy implications here.

And if we are to meet the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050, as both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have endorsed, the U. S. cannot emit more than 1 billion metric tons of CO2 annually.  Which the country last did in 1910, when it had less than one-third of its current population and per-capita income (adjusted for inflation) was around $6,000.

A small sacrifice.  It may be important to think about the implications of climate change, but it's just as important to think about the human cost—which politicians rarely consider.

Maybe the prospect of global food shortages doesn't spell catastrophe for everyone:

As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering.

Oddly, one of them is [Hugo] Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the government of North Korea faces another food crisis; bread prices explain in part why Pervez Musharraf lost control of Pakistan's government in February.

It's a painful way to bring down dictatorships, but in the long term it's not nearly as painful as allowing them to continue.

Then again, if your military-backed dictatorship has been placating the masses for decades by providing them with subsidized bread, you might think twice about wanting a free market to develop:

As global prices have soared in the past year, cheap bread has been disappearing from Egyptian shops, and free-market prices have risen 48 percent. The predictable result came on April 6, when workers at the country's largest textile factory, in the city of Mahalla el-Kubra, attempted to strike, only to be blocked by a massive deployment of security forces. Angry crowds took to the streets for two days. Schools and shops were burned, a huge billboard of President Hosni Mubarak was torn down and at least two people were killed when police opened fire.

Mubarak responded to the trouble the way the regime always has. His prime minister and a host of other officials rushed to the smoldering city to purchase peace. The textile workers were promised a month's bonus pay and new health-care facilities for their town. Mubarak ordered the army to begin baking and distributing more bread and lifted tariffs on some food imports. Meanwhile, his prosecutors brought charges against some 150 people blamed for the unrest.

As they say in the circus, the show must go on.

Another consequence of the food crisis: less resistance to biotech crops.

As automakers scramble to meet consumer demand for more fuel-efficient cars (not to mention government mandates), they are abandoning large-displacement V-8s and V-6s in favor of miserly four-cylinder engines, often turbocharging them to increase horsepower.  But there is a side effect to forced induction:

At a time of record pump prices for regular gas, automakers are introducing more cars that use even costlier premium.

The number of new vehicle models that need — or at least run better on — the priciest gasoline has steadily risen from 166 in the 2002 model year to 282 this year, shows an analysis by Kelley Blue Book at the request of USA TODAY.

More may be on the way. Automakers are turning to smaller, high-performance engines, which use premium as a way to boost mileage without losing power.

Being able to boast of a couple more miles per gallon can be a selling point but won't quell the ire down the road of buyers having to put in the glamour gas, says David Champion, auto testing chief for Consumer Reports. "People really, really, really dislike putting premium into their car," Champion says. "You see the cheaper fuel right in front of you, and you can't use it."

This problem can't be solved by better engine design alone.  Higher compression ratios lead to more power, but the more you compress the fuel/air mixture inside a combustion chamber, the greater the chances for pre-ignition (aka "knocking").  Automakers solve the problem in various ways, but the primary consequence is that car owners must select premium fuel, which is usually at least 20 cents more expensive than the regular stuff.  So the irony is that you might negate any savings you'd realize from choosing a smaller, more fuel-efficient car.

Most high-performance vehicles will accept regular gas, but you'll lose some power and fuel economy.  Based on this, I'm not sure why anyone would be willing to pay a premium for a smaller, higher-performance car vs. a simple, non-turbocharged econobox, if fuel savings is the primary criterion.  It seems a hybrid or a diesel would be a better choice, although diesel fuel is very expensive at the moment.  So given the higher cost for diesel, assuming it averages about the same MPG as a gas-electric hybrid, your most economical choice at the moment would be a hybrid . . . if they weren't so expensive in the first place!

Screw it, just buy the Suburban.

Skyrocketing metal prices have led to roof panels disappearing from English churches (HT: Marginal Revolution):

For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the Reformation.

Instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near record price that lead — the stuff many old church roofs are made of — is fetching on commodity markets.

Note that while lead is currently fetching $2,750 per ton, the damage to one church will cost $20,000 to repair.

It might even be worse on this side of the pond:

Metal scrappers have attacked churches and ransacked homes in this Midwestern city [Cleveland, OH], leaving entire neighborhoods uninhabitable.

Saint Theodosius Orthodox Cathedral here lost its insurance after a thief stole copper panels from the roof years ago. Three churches in Cleveland Heights have been stripped of copper gutters. And in the last few months, three churches in the North Collinwood neighborhood were stripped of copper downspouts.

“Our neighborhoods are being pillaged, not by Vikings or Goths, but by modern-day barbarians,” said Mike Polensek, North Collinwood’s City Council member. Even manhole covers and sewer drains are being stolen out of streets to be sold as scrap metal, Mr. Polensek said.

Houses, however, are the greatest targets of commodity scavengers in the United States. Neighborhoods depopulated by the rising tide of foreclosures make easy targets.

The punchline is that the scavengers are choosing which houses to raid by going through government foreclosure listings.

SUVs are being targeted as well, as their catalytic converters are often easily accessible. The precious metals found in trace amounts in cats command very high prices ($1,900 per ounce for platinum alone).

Of course, if you're facing foreclosure or repossession, you may just want to take the good stuff with you (HT: LewRockwell.com).

No, this is nothing to worry about:

Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers.

Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers -- the world's biggest corn producers -- will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year.

The cost of damn near everything we eat, particularly meat and dairy, is affected by this.  Pizza prices have gone up, and merchants are offering fewer coupon deals—because their costs have soared due to rising energy prices and less wheat being planted in favor of corn.

Even more carbon is released into the air as Brazilian farmers clear-cut huge swaths of Amazonian rain forest to grow more crops, not to feed people, but to put in our gas tanks.  You don't have to be a member of Al Gore's climate-change church to realize that getting rid of the few natural carbon sinks left on the planet isn't a very wise idea.

The ripple effects will be felt most in developing countries, which are unable to feed their own people as less grain is available for export.  Already tortilla prices in Mexico have skyrockted, and riots have erupted there and in Africa over rising food prices.

The U. S. lost nearly a quarter-million jobs in the first quarter of 2008.  Some of those newly-unemployed people likely won't find work any time soon.  Some of them may go on public assistance, like food stamps.  What will they do when they find that even a $5 stamp won't buy a gallon of milk?

But go ahead.  Keep putting that E85 in your flex-fuel Silverado.  Feel good about keeping our air clean and reducing our dependence on psychotic Muslims for oil.  Keep electing the same whores to Congress, who shovel billions into Archer Daniel Midland's coffers in return for a few pieces of political silver.  Feel confident that we've stamped out hunger here: it must be so if we can turn foodstuffs into gasoline!

This is nothing to worry about.

Random Friday linkage:

• Warren Meyer on why the labor market is largely immune to the minimum wage:
  
  

  Correcting for higher state minimum wages, but also adjusting for illegal immigrants (who are a special case with super-low bargaining power) and factoring in salaried workers (who by law to be salaried have to be making much more than minimum wage) one still finds that less than 2% or less make minimum wage, about half of whom are under 25.

  
  And here's another post (from Cafe Hayek) which suggests that the number actually earning minimum wage could be as low at 0.5% when tipped wage earners are taken into account.
  
• Some people just never learn, and now German researchers have discovered genetic proof.
  
• Freakin' cool: a working model of a V-12 engine made from paper.
  
• Praise Allah and pass on the left: Saudi Arabia is set to lift the ban on women drivers.
  
• Tightening emissions and fuel-economy standards prompt Chrysler to kill its legendary Hemi engines.
  
• More problems solved in Zimbabwe: the central bank issues a $10,000,000 note to battle hyperinflation.  Now you just need $5,000,000 more to buy a hamburger (about $6 US at black-market exchange rates).
  
• Novels composed on mobile phones and read by other mobile subscribers top Japan's bestseller lists when published on dead trees.

Rolling Stone, that noted bastion of conservatism, has published a scathing indictment of the ethanol scam:

This is not just hype—it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption—yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

And you thought recycling subsidies were bad.  Up to half the wholesale cost of ethanol is subsidized, and that doesn't count the subsidies for corn itself, which are higher than for any other crop.  And one company more than any other benefits from these subsidies, which total over $5 billion a year: Archer Daniels Midland.  Politicians from Bob Dole to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley to Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all hype ethanol, hoping to attract ADM's generous political donations, which total $3.7 million since 2000.  Seems a pittance to pay for such a huge windfall of taxpayers' money.

And if some poor Mexicans and Africans starve along the way, or more rain forest is clear-cut in Brazil, or we all start paying $10 for a gallon of milk, well that's just the cost of doing business: our cost for tolerating this dangerous, delusional boondoggle.

[cross-posted to libertarianism]

Russ Nelson has his own take on Maryland's new law which requires major employers (those with more than 10,000 employees) to contribute a minimum percentage of their payroll to health care coverage for their workforce.  Although Nelson's reaction is expected, what I really find amusing about this entry is his insertion of the Wal-Mart logo wherever he uses the word "companies," to drive home the point that this legislation is targeted at a specific company which just happens not to meet the legislation's arbitrary standards.

And really, why set the floor at 10,000 employees?  Only four private companies in the state employ that many people.  Imagine the Medicaid savings the state could realize if they dropped the minimum to 5,000 employees, or even 1,000.  After all, what's good for the poorly-paid employees of Wal-Mart should also be good for the poorly-paid clerks of Wally's Liquor Mart.  Eventually the state could save the taxpayers a bundle by requiring all businesses to provide health insurance to their workers.  You'd think socialists and libertarians would dance hand-in-hand in the streets of Baltimore: capitalism would get a dose of social justice, and the state would jettison a cumbersome and expensive welfare program¹.

Until, of course, businesses close up shop by the hundreds (or in the case of bigger corporations, pull out of Maryland) as they find themselves unable to pay the health insurance premiums, putting thousands out of work and forcing the state to raise taxes on everyone else who's still working to resurrect Medicaid, only on a much more massive scale than before.

Of course, long-term consequences rarely enter into the minds of lawmakers, who never see beyond the next election.  They're all starry-eyed twits who think they've struck a blow for good government.

¹: I realize that Medicaid is a Federally-mandated program and the state couldn't end it even if it wanted to, but it still illustrates my point.

[cross-posted from denver]

You know what pisses me off about the rhetoric surrounding Referendums C and D?  At least here on LJ, the people most in favor of them appear to be college students.  And yes, I can understand your perspective.  Higher education isn't protected by the same mandates as other social programs like K-12 schools and Medicaid.  Revenue shortfalls don't relieve the state of its obligation in funding "essential" programs (essential being defined as "the law says we must fund these programs"), so it looks elsewhere in the budget to make up the deficit.  Higher education is an easy target.

But it seems to me that a lot of people will vote yes on C and D because it protects their little slice of the pie.  You want the rest of us to subsidize your college education.  Why is that?  I can completely understand your wanting to improve your future earnings potential, so why aren't you making the investment?  Why are my wife and I paying back $60,000 in student loans if the state could have subsidized the cost?  (Note, my wife went to DU, not a public school, but my point remains.)  But I like to pay my own way as much as possible.  I don't think it's your responsibility to subsidize my or my wife's education.

Yes, it's a philosophical argument.  Given a choice, I would rather government live within its means, and even reduce services if necessary, than burden all of us and even future generations with more debt and taxation.  That some people will fall through the cracks of the system is nowhere near as tragic an injustice as the economy collapsing under the weight of massive public debt and bureaucracy.

But now I'm getting yelled at by others in comments to this post that I'm adopting a "fuck the poor" attitude and that I just want my pound of flesh back.  Which is quite funny considering there hasn't been a TABOR refund since 2002.  But what I'm hearing from some C and D supporters is that they won't be able to afford school anymore.  Damn, I'm sorry about that.  But that isn't my fault.  Well, it is, sort of: I obviously didn't convince enough people to vote against Amendment 23 in 2000, which forces the state to annually increase spending on K-12 education (so far to the tune of 39% over the past five fiscal years).  And because this is an amendment to the state constitution, it can't be suspended by the legislature even temporarily.

So we have bad fiscal policy + drought that devastated agriculture + recession leading to lower tax revenues = temporary budget shortfalls.  That's right, temporary.  Colorado's economy is recovering rather nicely from the recession, and I would say it's because of TABOR, not in spite of it.  That's because keeping a lid on government spending stimulates the economy.  Raise taxes and increase public debt, and the gains made in the economy will disappear, as consumers cut their spending and businesses stop expanding.

But if we gut it out another year or two, tax revenues will rise, and with the increase in the state's population, TABOR spending limits will rise with them.  Programs that were once cut will slowly be restored, even if I'd rather they weren't.  (Oops, there's my "fuck the poor" attitude showing again.)

But before you accuse me of being selfish, think about the long-term consequences of handing the government a blank check and letting them increase spending without any controls.  Think of all the debt you'll be paying back, and not just in the form of your loans.  And then maybe you'll realize it's not just about you, either.

Dispelling the Myths: The Truth about TABOR and Referendum C

On the way home from work last night, I noticed that one of the Conoco stations at Sheridan and Dartmouth (yes, there are two of them there, right across from each other) listed regular unleaded at $2.84 per gallon.  That was a 25-cent jump from just the day before.

This morning, as I stopped to pick up smokes before heading into work, the price had risen to $3.05.

Expect prices of many other goods to rise as it becomes more expensive to ship them.

In other words, there isn't a person in this country who won't be affected by Katrina in some way.  Think about that before you say that what's happening in New Orleans and the northern Gulf coast isn't your problem.