Living in a Funhouse Run by Morons

By Alan Caruba

It is hard not to believe that the United States is being run by people who have no idea regarding science, economics, or history.

Case in point, back in 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that carbon dioxide was “a pollutant.” That is to say, CO2 is, according to SCOTUS, a gas that must be limited, sequestered, and subject to vast bureaucratic efforts to save the planet from its deleterious affects.

The only problem with this definition is that CO2 is responsible for every blade of grass, every field of wheat, every giant Sequoia tree. Not one bit of vegetation on earth grows without it. Moreover, human beings exhale about two pounds of it daily. No vegetation. And soon no animals that are herbivores. Take away the herbivores and the carnivores, meat-eaters, have nothing to dine upon. This makes life dodgy for humans who are both herbivores and carnivores.

One can only conclude that the judges have drunk as deeply of the Green Kool-Aid as apparently every other member of government. Environmentalism will not save the planet or a single life. Just the opposite. Its opposition to pesticides like DDT has already cost millions of lives lost to malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

But who could be against clean air and clean water? Well, certainly not Republicans because the Environmental Protection Agency was foisted upon us during the Nixon administration along with other agencies that expanded the size of the federal government.

Now we keep hearing that the present Recession will be solved with millions of “green collar” jobs. This is so absurd as to be laughed out of the room, but then, so is the notion that CO2 is a pollutant.

The one thing it surely is not, is a gas that has any effect whatever on climate change.

A policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, William Yeatman, pointed out that in my home state of New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine repeating the same green job nonsense, “is doomed to failure for the same reason communism failed in Russia: government is incapable of successfully planning any industry,” adding that “the only jobs government can create are those for bureaucrats and regulators.” States that do not have a constitutional mandate to balance their budgets are also doomed to failure.

Right now, the wind and solar power industry produces about one percent of all the electricity Americans need, but we keep hearing that countless new green jobs will result from growth in both these areas. The problem is that without government subsidies, neither wind, nor power would even be in business.

In some cases, states have passed laws requiring utilities to get some of their power from wind and solar even though it is the least efficient and reliable means. Some states have required utilities to buy million of dollars of bogus “carbon credits” and guess who ends up picking up the tab for this? YOU!

The Obamaloonies cannot wait to take office and start running America and, if you think life is getting difficult now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. One of the reasons Detroit’s Big Three auto manufacturers are in Washington begging for a loan are the mandates imposed on them by Congress in the form of CAFÉ standards and a dozen other ways to insure every car and truck will cost more for no good reason.

I am all for safety standards, but have you noticed that more than 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year no matter how many air bags and other gimmicks are added?

If you think the Congressional mandate that ethanol be blended with every gallon of gasoline was useful to anyone other than those making ethanol, think again. The ethanol debacle forced up the cost of corn and soy to the extent that food riots broke out around the world and now some of the same ethanol producers are going out of business because corn and soy’s prices have risen to a point where, even with major subsidies, they can’t make a profit.

If the word “subsidies” keeps popping up, it’s because Congress is under the impression that it can take public monies to prop up private enterprises whose sole purpose is to help save the Earth or make us “energy independent.”

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and no nation on Earth is energy independent. If that was the case, oil-rich Venezuela would not be tottering on the edge of insolvency. Of course, it helps that socialism is the economic system there.

And creeping socialism in the United States has not yet convinced anyone that it does not work. It has never worked. When you use “saving the environment” or “social justice” to justify one new socialist government program after another, eventually you end up with a DEPRESSION.