"Green" energy fiascoes hurt the poor the most as they force food AND energy costs to skyrocket as tax money is wasted by government programs to enrich the well connected while further impoverishing the poor:
Price of Ground Beef Hits All-Time High...
The secret, dirty cost of government's green power push
"This is an ecological disaster."
The ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.
Five million acres of land set aside for conservation - more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined - have vanished on Obama's watch.
Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.
Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.
The government's predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.
EPA rules kill clean energy project...
More than seven years after making public its plans to construct a major coal-fired power plant in Rogers Township, Wolverine leaders have given up.
Faced with years of government red tape and what backers of the project agree were unreasonable regulations, the cooperative admitted investing more than $25 million to jump through constantly moving hoops set up to block construction of new power plants.
What started as a promise for as many as 2,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs is now off the table.
So once again, the poor pay more for energy and the opportunity for employment vanishes.
Edited by Rogerdodger, 18 December 2013 - 10:53 AM.