A Global Goring 

Even if you believe CO2 emissions cause global warming, there are unintended consequences when the government tries to solve this hyped problem.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a proposal circulating in Britain would establish personal CO2 rationing. Each person would be allotted some CO2 emissions. Every gasoline purchase, air conditioner turned on and jet flight would be charged against your account. Run out of credits, and you must buy more from anyone with a surplus. So much for the idea that only polluting factories pay a price to fight global warming. Of course, administering the plan would cost billions of dollars in taxes.

Forbes.com reports companies such as Chiquita Brands are considering costs of being sued – or criminally prosecuted – under the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley Act for not accurately disclosing “carbon footprints” to investors. Chiquita would have to calculate greenhouse gas emissions created by fertilizing banana trees in Central America, and emissions generated transporting fruit by truck or ship. Then different types of farms and varying sizes of fruit must be factored in, differentiating organically grown from traditionally grown. Energy, waste, water use, travel, storage in refrigerated containers and even transport in retailers’ trucks are all factors in determining the so-called carbon footprint.
Ironically, environmentalists now oppose creation of a 150-mile route crossing the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park to deliver electricity from a planned collection of 30,000 38-foot-by-40-foot solar dishes near El Centro. The double irony is they claim not only would the route ravage habitat, but, by supporting polluting facilities, the project would increaseglobal warming more than it prevents. The solar farm, of course, is a direct response to the government’s global-warming-inspired mandate that utilities provide 20 percent of electricity from renewable power sources by 2010.
Global warming alarmists aren’t only short-sighted. They are menacing. The U.N.’s chief climate scientist implies unintended consequences are worth the cost because “we have a window of opportunity of only seven years” to avoid catastrophe.
Maybe that’s why James Hansen, the NASA scientist given much credit for whipping up global warming alarmism, has called for corporate executives to be tried for high crimes against humanity for spreadingdoubtabout global warming. Who would have thought challenging an idea might result in a prison term?
A California newspaper columnist has suggested we can curb global warming and still build concrete freeways by replacing greenhouse gas-emitting cement with something else. The problem is that the recommended substance is a byproduct of burning coal. Apparently the columnist missed the report that a Georgia judge recently blocked a coal-burning plant construction because burning coal emits greenhouse gases.
We need no more recent example of unintended consequences than the diversion of corn crops to create ethanol, which turns out to be no more green-friendly than gasoline, but has created food shortages and driven up prices.
Such shortsightedness may explain the I-was-for-it-before-I-was-against-it flip-flop of presidential candidate John McCain, who first called ethanol a “vital, vital alternative energy source,” but now says it “does nothing to increase our energy independence.”
Unintended consequences keep multiplying. But global warming alarmists may finally have gone too far. Now they blame flat-panel, big-screen TVs for accelerating global warming. We suspect a lot of people will see the unintended consequences behind that looming ban.