Anti-nuclear bias fuels energy woes

Our energy policy is certifiably insane. We heavily subsidize and mandate ethanol, a polluting, expensive fuel which is driving up food prices worldwide. Ethanol plants are beginning to dot the countryside, even in Arizona.

Meanwhile, no nuclear facilities have been built in the U.S. since the 1970s, even though nuclear is the most economically viable of the CO²-free sources of energy.

Here’s the problem. Federal policymakers are heavily influenced by left-wing environmentalists in forming energy policy. They still believe they should control which and how much fuel Americans consume. Their past failures include Nixon’s Project Independence price controls, Ford’s CAFE mandates, Carter’s synfuels and Clinton’s push for subsidized electric cars. Still they soldier on.

Now we have the ethanol mandate, America’s first major response to the purported global warming crisis. Early this decade, politician turned Nobel scientist Al Gore assured us that “by tripling U.S. use of bioenergy and bioproducts by 2010, we can keep millions of tons of greenhouse gases out of the air.”

We’re already there. In 2008, by law 9 billion gallons of ethanol will be produced, up from 3 billion in 2000 and headed for 36 billion by 2022. The planners told us it’s worth it to have a clean burning, inexpensive domestic fuel source.

But now the bad news is rolling in. It turns out there is no environmental benefit to burning ethanol compared to fossil fuels. Growing the corn, transporting it and refining the product are energy intensive activities. A recent article in Science magazine concluded that “(greenhouse gas) emissions from corn ethanol nearly double those from gasoline for each kilometer driven.”

Whoops. Ethanol isn’t the answer to rising fuel costs that it was hyped to be, either. AAA says ethanol costs 20 cents to 30 cents per gallon more than gasoline in spite of massive taxpayer subsidies at every step of its production.

But the rise in food prices might be the nastiest unintended consequence of our government’s ethanol obsession. Corn has gone from $2 a bushel when the first mandate bill was signed to more than $5 recently. This compulsory burning of food cost the average American family $130 in 2007, with large increases in the mandate still looming.

Unfortunately, millions of Third World consumers can’t afford higher food costs. They simply go hungry, setting the stage for political unrest, riots and wars of aggression. Ironically, global warming doomsayers have long predicted reduced food production as a consequence of not listening to them. Yet one of their pet solutions is already causing real misery for real humans.

These same environmental lefties have traditionally been hostile to nuclear fuel generation. Who knows why? Maybe it’s an aversion to technology or to anything with “nuclear” in its name. They’ve never been able to outlaw nuclear plant construction, but they’ve successfully stymied the development of the industry by overregulation and delay tactics.

It’s too bad. Nuclear power has proved around the world to be by far the safest, cleanest way to meet the growing demand for electricity. Yet nuclear power provides only 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S. Solar power, wind, hydro and other clean technologies may be part of the future mix, but they are technologically and economically unsuited to shoulder much of the burden for now. If we are serious about reducing air pollution in the foreseeable future, nuclear power must play a prominent role.

What should be done? Nuclear could compete in the free market, if there were one, so there’s no need for government favors and subsidies. Mainly government needs to step aside. Energy strategies should not be biased against nuclear. Political and legal barriers to spent fuel reprocessing and management should be removed. Americans should have access to global markets for commercial reactors.

The stories of ethanol and nuclear energy are stunning examples of how politicians and self-proclaimed environmentalists mess it up when they try to manage the economy and provide us with details on how to run our lives. We have the technology to produce plenty of clean energy. We just need to set free open markets and human resourcefulness to make it happen.