Al Gore on biofuels: "My bad"

This story should be called "Everything you need to know about how the world works".

You remember that biofuel craze that everyone bought into, on the grounds that it was all eco-friendly ("it comes from plants!") and would help mitigate global warming and make the flowers bloom and the streams run clean and the birds sing and all that jazz?

Oops, says the architect of the plan. Al Gore has now conceded what has been abundantly clear for years now, viz., that the whole biofuel subsidy programme was a complete mistake. Let's count the ways:

- tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline.

-  "The energy conversion ratios are at best very small"

- "The competition with food prices is real"

So, it is no good for the environent, is bad business, and distorts food markets. So why did he do it? Turns out he's as bad as everyone else -- he has a fetish for farmers:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

So why didn't they get rid of it?

"It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

And that, kids, is how the environment is lost. Al Gore is probably the most influential environmentalist on the planet, and even he succumbed to farmer-nostalgia, even he succumbed to political pressure, even he succumbed to junk science.

This is all you need to know about why we're doomed.