Have you been following the Washington Examiner’s regular forays into the world of ethanol subsidies? You can read more here, here and and here. If the Examiner’s pieces on this topic have fired you up, then take a deep breath. Big Green signalled its intentions this week to demand not only more ethanol subsidies from governments around the world, but more subsidies and assitance for all sorts of additional “renewable” energy projects.
Earlier this month, the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a roughly 1,000 page Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. As the title suggests, the report lays out how the world economy can shift towards renewable forms of energy, such as ethanol, and away from oil, gas, nuclear, etc.
In case you need to refresh your memory, here’s an Examiner editorial on why this and other IPCC reports need to be taken with a grain of salt.
The IPCC has posted a 30 page summary (ominously intended for “policy makers”) of the main report that you can read here. The usual suspects are already out there with their own interpretation and spin about how this document offers Yet One More Chance to save the world.
In the summary, you will find a selection labelled “Policy, implementation and financing.” This is where the IPCC outlines the ways that governments can subsidize not only ethanol but also solar, wind, geothermal and ocean energy.
The menu available to policymakers includes “regulations such as feed-in-tariffs, quotas, priority grid access, building mandates, biofuel blending requirements, and bioenergy sustainability criteria. Other policy categories are fiscal incentives such as tax policies and direct government payments such as rebates and grants; and public finance mechanisms such as loans and guarantees.”
In other words, the menu consists of the very same taxpayer-funded giveaways and sweetheart deals that Washington Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney regularly uncovers.
It won’t be too long until the MSM gets around to picking over the IPCC report and shaping stories around it. I am an optimist – rather than swallow the IPCC demands for more subsidies for renewables without a second thought, I like to think at least a few MSM reporters will have the guts to pick up the phone and call Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and get his take first.
As perhaps the IPCC’s most determined critic in the Senate, he may have a thing or two to say about how much stock ought to be put into IPCC reports.
