Ethanol, for one. You’ve been buying it twice for nearly 30 years. Everyone pretty much agrees it has no environmental benefit. It is a net energy loser. After you plant the corn, fertilize the corn, harvest the corn, haul the corn to market, process the ethanol, and haul the ethanol to a terminal for blending, you’ve spent more fossil fuels than you gain. You pay more at the pump and you paid billions in tax dollars to subsidize the cost. And, the need for ethanol in fuel blending ceased years ago as cars were produced with anti-knock sensors. But, it is mandated by the government. Bush even upped the ante before he left office, he mandated higher mix requirements. You have no say in this, you just have to comply with a bad law. All in the name of being green, when you aren’t being any greener.
Next comes the compact fluorescent bulbs. Packed with deadly mercury, they will put more toxic chemicals into the air from landfills than all the manufacturing has ever done. Another bad idea, another no choice come 2014. GE recently closed their last conventional bulb plant in the US. Another group on the unemployment line.
While they haven’t mandated low-flush toilets and shower heads, it’s being discussed.
Frito-Lay tried a great green idea. They packed Sun Chips in a compostable, plant-based bag in January. When you touched the bag it registered 95 decibels, louder than a lawnmower, a coffee grinder, or a barking dog. Without a government mandate, the consumer voted. They stopped buying Sun Chips. The environmental zealots are livid. Their comment is “a little noise was too much for Americans to handle.” They say we are doomed as a society. They will go to work to get a mandate for noisy bags. And, if we don’t throw the people out of office who are there now, we will get one.
Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA is quietly running rampant over congress putting in more and more environmental regulations that will cost jobs and household income. Congress is trying to put the reins on her, but with zero help from Obama.
You are mandated a higher utility bill for the foreseen future. With utilities mandated to use a higher and higher percentage of renewable energy, you will pay through the nose. Power that will reduce severely the coal usage. Replaced by solar and wind. Solar produced with the consumption of huge amounts of water in places where water is already scare. Wind produced with noise( see Sun Chips) and thousands of dead birds. Both intermittent sources of power and very costly. With products manufactured in foreign countries.
Then there is the energy tax already passed by the House under the name of cap and trade. Simply another way to mandate that your energy costs escalate forcing you to cut back or sacrifice elsewhere. Both, with many high-paid domestic jobs lost.
It always amazes me that environmentalists and politicians have huge blind spots with what they deem to be green. Mercury pollutions is OK in light bulbs. Water usage is OK in solar power. Noise and dead birds are OK in wind power. Jobs lost are OK with any green they deem green. Economic damage to the overall population is OK if the benefit is something they deem green.
If you like what is happening to your natural gas bills, get ready. The opponents of anything fossil are after the source of your new low cost gas. The source is huge amounts of new natural gas produced through putting high-pressure water and chemical into shale formations. Called fracking. Unless you get behind this benefit the opposition will kill it. This new source of natural gas could fuel cars and trucks. But, the politicians and environmentalist are behind battery operated transportation. This will increase the price of electrical power as demand picks up. If they have their way, you will be reading by candle light.
At what point do you say enough. Enough of government making bad energy decisions. Enough of government telling you what you must buy. Will health care be the tipping point?
