I’ve posted about this in the past, but a recent cato daily podcast spells it out succinctly. I share the expert’s opinion on this, and please note that it is not denying that climate changes exists and is most likely caused by human greenhouse gas emissions, it only draws comparisons to other dangers that threaten human life. Give the podcast a listen, it’s only about 10 minutes long.

A few thoughts: Climate change is a red herring. The end result of a marketplace shift towards “green” tech would lower or eliminate reliance on foreign oil, subvert large corporate strangleholds on areas such as automobiles, power, lighting, utilities themselves, and force better manufacturing practices among companies. It is a smart idea to adopt green technology in your personal lives where it is economically feasible. Higher efficiency saves money. One major point brought up in the podcast is the human destruction of undeveloped lands for the purposes of agriculture. One of the proposed solutions to our need for a renewable portable fuel source is biofuels. Given our need for portable and easily distributable fuel ethanol and biodiesel are currently being pushed as green technologies. Not only does a huge market increase in these items put a strain on the current agricultural production of our currently developed lands, which in turn drive up prices for those who need these fundamental food sources, but it will lead to expanding the US agriculture industry as they need more and more land to fulfill not only our food needs but our portable fuel needs as well. This could be disastrous for local environments, not only in the razing of land, but the increased pesticide usage. GM crops could help solve these issues and the normal green mentality of not consuming GM crops would be avoided as we’re not actually eating the crops.

Biodiesel from algae might be a decent short term solution but everyone is stuck on ethanol. I’d like to thank Iowa and the corn lobbyists for that.

Tags: cato,climate change,global warming,podcast
Categories: BJ, Philosophy etc
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