Is Green the New Stupid?

[Posted By Jake]

The EPA first stuck their nose in our bathroom. We laughed. Their incompetence was entertaining. The Federal government mandated low-flow toilets and shower heads to save water, and save the planet. Of course, you had to flush twice and take showers that were twice as long to get clean, but that's just your normal clueless bureaucratic bungling.

Then the EPA moved on to light bulbs. They outlawed regular incandescents and forced us to use the more expensive, funny-looking compact fluorescents (CFL's). These bulbs are supposed to save energy, and (you guessed it) save the planet. The problem is that these CFL's contain toxic amounts of mercury and require special handling and disposal. We're still laughing at the bureaucratic bunglers, but their "green" stupidity might be doing more harm than good.

Now Obama, in an election push to placate his liberal, environmental base, has authorized the EPA to announce a ridiculous 56 miles-per-gallon mandate for 2025, with the phase-in of these new regulations starting in 2017. That's a mere two product cycles for today's models.

A couple of weeks earlier, Al Gore took time off from groping masseuses to criticize the President for not standing up for "bold action". So, of course, Barack, leading from behind once again, responds with a grand "green" gesture, regardless of its real world practicality or financial impact.

What's left unsaid in all this progressive posturing is that the Obama administration has bought the silence of Detroit with their bailouts and embraced the environmental cult's worship of electric cars with our money. The Federal Energy Department has spent $465 million on Tesla and $529 million on Fiskar Automotive. Both companies are owned by Silicon Valley friends-of-Barack, so coincidentally these funds happen to be nice political grease, also. The simple fact that electric cars are inferior performers, too expensive, and unwanted by the American consumer is irrelevant to the "green" agenda.

In 2009, Energy Secretary Chu, a Nobel laureate like both his boss and the Goracle said, "...maybe I'm optimistic, but there's very little debate that a new green energy economy will bring economic prosperity."

Sorry, Mr. Secretary, that just sounds too much like toilet humor to me.