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.

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.

An Indian automotive company seeks to put its country on (four) wheels with the $2500 Tata Nano.

Obviously styling is not the Nano's main selling point.  But it seats five, gets over 50 MPG from its 33-horsepower, two-cylinder engine, and meets Euro III emissions standards.  This is exactly the sort of cheap wheels that have revolutionized economies in the past (think the Ford Model T or the Volkswagen Beetle).  In this case the Nano may signal a sea change in Indian mobility, as most of the country gets around on public transportation, bicycles and scooters.

But that doesn't sit well with some environmentalists, who seem to believe it's the duty of Indians to remain poor:

The Center for Science and Environment warns more cars will only exacerbate congestion and smog-related illnesses in a country where 57 percent of cities already face critical levels of air pollution.

Tata counters that the Nano is cleaner than the scooters it will replace and claims the car's catalytic converter cuts emissions by 80 percent. The Nano supposedly emits 30 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, well below the 160 g/km average of Europe's cars and far less than the 130 g/km standard the European Union will adopt in 2012. Even if half a million Nano's hit the road and each of them travels 5,000 miles a year, they will be responsible for less than 8 percent of India's annual CO2 emissions, Economic Times reports.

Most of the hand-wringing over the Nano has focused on its environmental impact, but some are beginning to ponder what the car will mean for global energy supplies. There is mounting concern that increased demand for petroleum will boost prices.

First, it's not clear that the massive growth forecast in Indian auto sales mean higher prices at U. S. pumps.  The higher prices here are due as much to a lack of refinery capacity as to a surging demand in crude oil.

Second, economic growth is catalyzed by higher mobility.  People who depend on public transit or small scooters for transportation have limited ranges of travel.  They must live closer to work and shopping, leading to overcrowding, greater stress on infrastructure and higher crime rates.  Automobiles extend the range of travel and expand their owners' connections to work, school and markets.

It is galling to see Westerners wring their hands over the attempts of developing countries to improve the lives of their own people.  They seem to forget that we crossed this threshold decades ago and have reaped the benefits ever since.  For countries such as India and China to do the same doesn't herald the end of the world, but rather the start of a new one.

If this doesn't inspire people to rise up against ethanol subsidies, I don't know what will:

OK, I was mad at the waste of tax dollars for ethanol programs that do nothing for the environment or to reduce net fossil fuel consumption. I was mad that a technology that in no way reduces CO2 production but does introduce radical new land-use-related environmental problems could be sold as an environmental panacea, rather than the corporate welfare it truly is. I was mad we have decided it is more important to subsidize corn farmers than to continue to provide the world's poor with cheap food. And I was flabbergasted that Congress could call for production of more corn-based ethanol than is physically possible with our entire corn crop.

But I really am mad now that ethanol subsidies are making craft beers rarer and more expensive to make.

So if you won't fight for your food supply or for the Amazon rain forest, maybe you'll fight for your microbrews.  We can only tolerate so much!

Al Gore had no business winning the Nobel Peace Prize if he couldn't come up with an energy plan like the one Mike Huckabee envisions:

I consider myself a conservationist. I think we ought to have some cap and trade. It worked with acid rain. I think it could work with Co2 emissions. I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

Bold indeed.  Time to invest in that pedicab business!

Afternoon lulz provided by commentary on Hit & Run:

Fools! Huckabee is positioning himself as the entropy candidate!

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

That's the finding of Chris Goodall, a UK environmentalist and author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, after analyzing the greenhouse gases emitted by beef production.  "The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere," says Goodall.  "Eating less and driving to save energy would be better."  And he's not suggesting that everyone adopt veganism and meditate on a hill all day; buying local meat and produce whenever possible will help cut CO2 emissions.  "Don't buy anything from the supermarket," Goodall says, "or anything that's traveled too far."

Goodall isn't some industry-paid crank spreading a little FUD, by the way.  He's a Green Party candidate for Parliament and a well-known writer on the environment in the UK.  But he's also spent time researching the food production industry in Britain and has found that it may be one of the worst contributors to greenhouse gases in the world.  Ironically, the organic beef industry is even worse because organically-raised cattle emit more methane (OK, I find this claim a bit dubious—cows are going to fart mankind into oblivion? apparently there's significant research on this topic, however).

Some other interesting environmental myths debunked by Goodall:

• Cloth diapers are more harmful to the environment than the disposable variety.  That's because all disposable diapers do is take up some landfill space—about 0.1% according to the Environment Agency of the UK government.  Cloth "nappies", on the other hand, require frequent washing, which wastes energy and water.  (However, he should mention that disposable diapers also require energy to transport them to the landfill.)


• Paper bags cause more greenhouse gas emissions than plastic, because they take up more space and thus require more energy to be shipped from suppliers to shops and so on.


• Organic dairy cows emit more methane and produce less milk than non-organic cows, so their pollution footprint is larger.


• Importing produce can undo a year's worth of the energy saved by installing "green" light bulbs.

Here is the Web site for Goodall's book.  (Tip o' the hat to Dick Clark on the Mises Economics Blog.)

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 from libertarianism]

The story I linked to about a regional government in Belgium imposing a barbecue tax was indeed an April Fool's hoax:

Reports appeared in local media earlier in the month that a law had been approved to charge residents of the 4-million-strong region 20 euros for each grilling session beginning in June.

"We have repeatedly denied this information, which is nothing but an April Fool's Day joke. But we never imagined it would create such a fuss," said the press secretary of Wallonia's minister for agricultural, rural affairs, the environment and tourism.

Oh, those wacky Belgians!  And it's not the first time their media have pulled this kind of stunt:

Belgian media was implicated in another practical joke last December when state television broke into its regular programming with a report that the Dutch-speaking half of the country, Flanders, had declared its independence and that the king and queen had fled.

They must read a lot of Slashdot, which is (in)famous for posting bogus stories on April 1.

Well, they sure got me (not to mention a good portion of the blogosphere and even mainstream media).  But I think it's a sad reflection on the current level of discourse on global warming that the story was taken so seriously.  It doesn't sound that far-fetched, does it?

[cross-posted from libertarianism]

If you're planning on grilling a steak or brat in the Belgian region of Wallonia, you'll need to pay the tax man:

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

I'm still not sure this isn't a belated April Fool's joke, especially after this revelation:

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Presumably the helicopters will be solar-powered, so as to not emit the same CO2 those evil barbecue grills spew.

Someone, please confirm this is a joke.

A tale of two houses:

The first house is a 10,000 square-foot mansion that consumes more energy in one month than the average household uses in a year.

The second house is a 4,000 square-foot ranch that uses geothermal pumps to draw water from the ground to heat and cool the house and uses a quarter of the electricity needed for a conventional HVAC system.  Rainwater is collected and stored in an underground cistern, which also holds wastewater from the house (after being purified), then is used to irrigate the surrounding property.  The landscaping is designed to blend the property into the countryside.

House # 1 belongs to Oscar winner and Defender of Earth Al Gore.

House # 2 is the Crawford, Texas home of President George W. Bush, the so-called "Texas White House".

And before you counter that Gore buys carbon offsets to balance his energy use, consider the possibility that carbon offsets could actually increase the consumption of dirty power.  It seems more efficient to simply use clean, renewable sources from the start rather than offset your dirty power usage elsewhere.

A comment to a post in an undisclosed journal:

I'm a bit extreme on this issue. I value trees over most people and am completely unforgiving when people cut down trees. If I lived beside a huge tree and was afraid it would come down on my house, I'd move before cutting it down.

Yeah.  Wow.  Is there even any point in debating property rights with someone with this mindset?  No, I didn't think so, either.

I wonder if they'd disclose the dead-tree-about-to-fall-on-the-house to a prospective buyer.

This is the story which sparked the discussion.  In reference to the neighbor (who's being more than reasonable, and doesn't even know if he can cut down the tree until a surveyor determines the property line), this same commenter said he was "a bastard who should be taken out and shot."  Just a bit extreme.  I'll remember this comment the next time some lefty takes me to task for arguing car thieves and burglars can be shot by property owners.  Sheesh.

Funny how today's Dilbert strip ties into this.