"I'm Running for Congress, and My Platform Is the Environment..."

"...you know, like... the whole environment?" - Amy Poehler, Envy

I love the environment, but I hate public policy with regard to the environment. I'm always impressed with what the private sector comes up with. For instance, some of our eco-friends raised money and bought a few thousand of the worst emitting cars they could find in LA. They then smashed them so they could cause no more pollution. What a great idea. You can do a lot of good without forcing the public's hand.

I don't like policy interference because they often do more harm than good. 60 years ago they told us of the dangers of nuclear power. They said it would cause doomsday, and so forth. They wanted a renewable energy source, so we continued with burning fossil fuels for energy until we found one.

We tried wind mills, but they were killing "thousands" of large endangered birds.

We tried dams, but the environmentalists don't like man-made flooding. Dams do not allow salmon to swim back up stream and affect other water life adversely.

We tried solar panels, but to generate as much electricity as a nuclear plant, you must have panels that cover an area as wide as Washington DC, not to mention you must wash the panels every 2-3 days.

Since we have primarily relied on fossil fuels over the past 60 years, we now have the global warming scare. Many environmentalists are pushing for nuclear power. They now realize it is much safer to human and animal activity than they originally thought, and the emissions have no negative impact.

Had we gone with nuclear power all along we would not have killed thousands of endangered birds, we would not have wasted money and resources on solar energy, we would not have interfered with the nation's fresh waterways, and most importantly our greenhouse gas emissions would have been significantly less. In this case, interference has caused much more harm than good.