You really can't go wrong by assuming that the environmental lobby wants "the last human being to turn out the lights" on his or her journey back to our cave-dwelling days.
One abiding tenet of the environmental faith is that mankind is the only creature wrecking the environment. All other animal behavior is just fine and dandy. Thus when a pack of wolves kills an elk, that's nature's way of controlling the elk population. But when Joe Schmoe buys a hunting permit, takes a week off work and kills an elk, that's "unnatural" and "unbalances" the elk population.
Many people think it's big business that's outsourced middle America's jobs to China and India over the past 20 years or so. Instead, we should thank the stone-age enviro lobby. Because of their insistence that whatever mankind does is an abomination to the pristine primordial soup that gave birth to "mother earth," and because lots of people are dumb enough to give them money, they were able to buy feel-good legislation from Congress that killed the jobs.
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Here's just one example: Because of that legislation, we don't make any "dangerous" lead-painted toys in America anymore. Instead, we send our toy specifications to China, where environmental and safety regulations are unknown or ignored. After exporting the jobs for making the toys, we then import the toys and sell them here. And guess what they were painted with? But we can all feel good about not making "dangerous" toys in America, anymore.
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Which brings us to oil refineries. These are big, expensive and occasionally dangerous. Like other businesses, they can't be outlawed outright. Instead, they are regulated until new ones can't be built here anymore.
Of course, refineries can be built in China, India and so on. Unfortunately for us, these countries are now developing a middle class by doing all the jobs that we've exported because we've regulated our industry out of existence. And this new middle class has decided it likes cars. What a surprise! Gosh, it sure was nice of the Americans to outsource their oil refinery here so we could buy cheap gasoline!
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Of course, we – being purists – can use ethanol. And our farmers will certainly be happy about that, because we will use a lot of ethanol: Consumer Reports found that a gallon of E85 (10%) ethanol delivers only about 70 percent of the mileage delivered by a gallon of gasoline. (That's why gasoline is doubly expensive where ethanol is mandated by regulation: it costs more at the pump to keep the local enviros happy, and you get less energy for your dollar as you drive away.)
I think it was Voltaire who said, "The best is the enemy of the good." So if clean air and water is good, then for America's enviros the goal has to be pristine, never been soiled by the lungs of mankind or pistons of General Motors air. Don't worry about the soot and noxious fumes being generated in China and blowing across the ocean. Just crawl back into your cave, man – and for goodness sakes, leave those elk alone!
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