My must read of the day is "The Secret, Dirty Cost Of Obama's Green Power Push," from the Associated Press:
[T]he ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat, and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.
Five million acres of land set aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama's watch. […]
All energy comes at a cost. The environmental consequences of drilling for oil and natural gas are well documented and severe. But in the president's push to reduce greenhouse gases and curtail global warming, his administration has allowed so-called green energy to do not-so-green things.
In some cases, such as its decision to allow wind farms to kill eagles, the administration accepts environmental costs because they pale in comparison to the havoc it believes global warming could ultimately cause.
Whether it's immigration policy, the minimum wage, or green energy, politicians love to ignore the possible negative consequences of the policies they champion.
Why not acknowledge them? Few things are achieved with a perfect outcome. Certain adverse affects should and will derail bad plans, but sometimes they're just part of the process. To ignore them is deceitful.
To damage the environment for the sake of being "green" undercuts the logic of environmental policy. Ethanol has bipartisan support, but it’s laughable for anyone to point to it as a superior energy alternative when the method to achieve it is far from environmentally friendly.
Stories like this should embolden critics of the administration, not because those critics hate alternative energy but because alternative energy is largely a scam.