A Green Exercise in Idiocy

By Alan Caruba

Hardly a day goes by anymore without some breathless announcement of some new “Green” initiative. It’s all rather boring really, but politicians are eager to associate themselves with these idiotic exercises in futility. Obviously, the greatest of these is “saving the Earth” as if anyone could actually do a thing about it if an asteroid hit, the Sun decided to fry us all, or more likely, a new Ice Age arrives any day now.

Anyway, on November 7, the National Governors Association (NGA) announced “an innovative clean energy partnership with the “Climate Savers Computing Initiative” (CSCI).

Try and wrap your mind around this. A bunch of computer manufacturers and at least two utterly besotted state Governors think they are going to save the Earth by instituting “a 50 percent reduction in current energy consumption from state-owned computing equipment over the next four years.”

NGA Chair, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will be “the first governors to commit their states to this partnership and will be sending a letter to all governors encouraging them to join the program as well.”

In case no one noticed, a large bridge in Minnesota collapsed not long ago and apparently the state had not allocated proper attention or funds for its maintenance. Kansas just voted to kill off several proposed coal-fired electrical utilities and one can only guess where its growing population is going to get more when they really need it. But cutting the amount of electricity that some computers use is their real priority.

Why? Because "The wasted electricity is dispersed as heat and increases the cost of powering the computer, as well as the emission of greenhouse gases." Say what? Computers are giving off greenhouse gases? Hell, human beings exhale two pounds of CO2 every day!

This is the kind of feel-good window dressing that governors and other politicians just love, but it does absolutely nothing to address the real, human problems that beset their states such as enticing and keeping businesses from deciding to set up shop in India or China. It has no affect on crime, poverty, and the provision of education or health services.

Instead it gives politicians a change to blather about reducing the amount of electricity some computers use and all in the name of “saving the Earth.”

This is why anyone with half a brain hates most politicians.