My reluctance to accept the environmental doomsday scenarios is just that so many of such scares for centuries have been proven wrong. Scare and fear sells well and just gets more print than it merits.

Our environment does have problems that require attention but it is mostly likely local problems addressed that should be addressed at local levels and not solved by national and global command and control policies. The economics of such solutions is just too complicated to consider the possible outcomes.

For example the use of ethanol to substitute for gasoline is contributing to a crisis in the cost and availability of food.

And now those ‘bioplastics’ made to substitute for oil based plastics is causing a similar unforseen problem. Not only is it using valuable food resources for its production, it is causing the release of elevated methane level, “a greenhouse gas 23 times mor epowerful than carbon monoxide”, from our landfills. See the story from the Guardian.

Businesses have spent millions to “go green” and they will run into such dilemmas. It reminds me of a children’s pajama manufacturer who was mandated to put a flame retardant in the fabric and was then sued because the flame retardant was considered a carcinogenic substance.

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