Liquid Pork by The Editors on National Review Online

The government is simply no good at picking winners and losers in the energy market (or any market, for that matter). Renewable energy works when it comes from consumer-driven innovation, not from politics. The government has been subsidizing inefficient forms of renewable energy for decades, and it has gotten us nowhere. Ethanol subsidies are a case in point: The 2005 energy bill mandated the use of ethanol in gasoline. As farmers shifted corn production from food to fuel, corn prices (and, consequently, meat and dairy prices) skyrocketed. Corn ethanol, inefficient as a gasoline additive, had a negative impact on gas mileage as refiners used more of it.

What did the government do in response to this failure? It increased the ethanol mandate five-fold in 2007.

Spy Agencies to Warn New President of Warming’s Dangers - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

The Post article describes a talk given last week by Thomas Fingar, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council:

By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa. For poorer countries, climate change “could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Fingar said, while the United States will face “Dust Bowl” conditions in the parched Southwest. He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades.