President Bush's call yesterday for a dramatic slowdown of green-house-gas emissions reflects growing concern for the consequences of climate change. But what about the consequences of the world's response?
The fact is, food riots resulting partly from the United States' alternative energy policies have arrived at our front door. Crowds of hungry demonstrators swarmed the presidential palace in Haiti last week to protest skyrocketing food prices.
In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic.
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Thus, even if biofuels produce an energy surplus, they would not necessarily be environmentally sound. Worse, they harm the US economy. Higher energy and food prices reduce consumers' disposable income more or less equally, meaning they disproportionately affect poorer people. Higher food prices, alternative energy subsidies and greenhouse-gas-emissions controls only make it harder for these people to earn a living or afford better education and health care.
Climate-change remedies can lead to greater poverty, starvation and disease, as well as widespread ecological destruction - some of the very misfortunes that they're supposed to prevent. In our haste to address global warming, we have yet to think seriously about our policies' unintended effects.
The results have been disastrous, and they're only getting more so.
Of course, the response is that, while biofuels are the wrong policy, we just need to get the right people in office so they can choose the right policies. Hmmm. It’s a bit like an abused wife who can’t find the courage to leave her husband and put herself back on the market. But, in this case, the wife is the American public and the market is…well, the market.
HT: Cafe Hayek
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