The benefits of global warming

If there is one thing I have learned over the past twenty years or so its that any time the government declares an emergency you’d better hang on to your wallet. So let me be the first to say, “hold on to your wallet” now that the current crop of legislators have taken up the mantel of global warming.

In the future, global warming and all the accoutrements that go along with it, is going to be the biggest cash cow in many a generation.

When the government starts doling out all of its subsidies and favored status to the myriad hucksters and schemers that are beginning to crop up like mushrooms, rest assured you as the tax payer and consumer will be the one who inevitably feels the pain.

As the national hysteria gains in volume the level of handouts will increase exponentially. Every quack concept or invention supposedly designed to decrease our level of energy dependence will be met with ringing endorsement by some Senator or congressman, with most of these boondoggles never showing any benefit or proof they actually perform the function they were sold to do.

Fortunes will be made in the alternative energy business and long after many of these harebrained schemes are uncovered as fraudulent the perpetrators will be sipping margaritas on a beach somewhere in the Bahamas.

A new boom will surely follow just like the tech boom which preceded it, this time instead of dot com it will be any stock with the word “alternative” in it that goes through the roof. Millionaires and billionaires will be created overnight who will then wind up in the poor house in the inevitable bust.

The ones for whom a few million in stock options aren’t enough will ride the wave all the way up until the point they end up doing the perp walk ala Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay for bilking their companies retirement funds and assorted other larcenies. There will be a few of those for sure.

But the people who will suffer the most, as is always the case, will be the ones who can least afford it. Even now, because of the fraud that ethanol can lower the cost of gasoline; any product containing corn will be higher this year at the grocery store. Not only will products containing corn be higher (practically all soda contains corn syrup), but so will dairy products. The demand for corn has dramatically increased, since now it is seen as an alternative fuel and the increased pressure has in turn doubled the cost of feed for livestock. Increased feed costs equal increased production costs for milk, cheese and any other dairy product that ends up in the grocery store. This has already begun to happen.

With the demand for corn sure to escalate, more farmers will plant corn which means that less grain will be farmed, that will in turn send up the cost for bread and any other grain dependent products. The trivial amount of ethanol production will have little or no impact on the price of gasoline, but the impact of higher demand for corn will have a substantial impact on prices at grocery stores nationwide.

Ethanol is just the first of many usufructs that will be foisted onto the citizenry as the United States engages in it’s charade of weaning itself from oil and reducing CO2 emissions. None of these measures will be successful or even very serious until Americans are forced to change due to oil being altogether unavailable. But the issue as always will be dolled up in flowery language and will most assuredly be for the benefit of the children and big business will jog for position at the trough of government contracts and handouts while the taxpayer will take it in the wallet.

http://thedailyobfuscation.blogspot.com/2007/07/popcorn-prices-popping-thanks-to.html