Name and Shame: Hyperwealthy Blowhard Watch

Almost nothing triggers my gag reflex like some hypocrite with a bloated bank account telling the rest of us how to live green while they suck up as much carbon and flatulate as much as they please. Tiny little beer can cars and poisonous flickering lightbulbs, holidays in the back garden and freezing houses for the rest of us. But for the Green Priesthood, it's private jets, 24 hour blazing incandescence, Humvees, and big stonking fireplaces. These people need to be exposed for the liars and hypocrites they are. They need to be singled out and ridiculed for their pathetic excuses and their preening arrogance. And so, presenting the Hyperwealthy Blowhard of the Day, the man NRO called the Green Governator, His Bloated Terminatorship, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Arnold want's the rest of us to walk, bike, or take public transport (Right, Arnie, in LA.), while he drives one of these AND one of these, and he used to drive one of these. Now it's Governor Busybody's money and and he can spend it anyway he wants....but get off my ass, Arnie about how I spend my mine.

Warmenists vs. The Poor, II

As I noted yesterday, the direct diversion of food crops into biofuel production and the change in cultivation from plants for food to plants for fuel will inevitably decrease the amount of food available in the market, raise prices and push the marginal poor right over into starvation. This Wall Street Journal story from Japan is an apt example. The farmer is being subsidized to grow a variety of rice suitable for conversion into ethanol instead of the food rice he used to grow. This wouldn't happen without subsidies. I don't know how ecofanatics sleep at night. Maybe they'll send some starvation offsets to Manila or Jakarta.

Warmenists vs. The Poor Part I

As anyone in an undergraduate economics class could tell you the fuel market and food markets were essentially separate. Rises in oil price had only an indirect marginal effect on the price of food through fuel and fertilizer costs. Climate fanatics however have suceeded in linking the two directly by enlisting Big Agriculture and Big Government in forcing biofuel mandates on the world. Not only are food crops like palm oil and soybeans now diverted directly to fuel production, agricultural land is diverted to the production of fuel crops rather than food crops. If you're growing corn for ethanol, you plant high sugar varieties, if you're growing for food, you want high protein. Less wheat, more corn, and so on. None of this could have happened without the perverse incentives of government subsidies. Congratulations for joining at the hip two groups who couldn't care less about the poor--climate fundmentalists and agribusiness.
When even the BBC gets it, it should be obvious to everyone.