When Green goes Brown

There's big money to be made flogging "green" solutions to our problems, and politicians and businesses are scrambling to get a piece of the green pie. The industry is maturing, meaning we're starting to see big green bets go sour.

For example, Kevin Rudd won the last election in Australia by running on a very aggressive program to fight global warming. As Prime Minister, his grandiose plans ran into a wall as the recession and ClimateGate spurred popular resistence, and the whole thing is now been put on hold. Surprisingly, "doing nothing" seems to cost rather a lot:

Kevin Rudd has delayed – sorry, extended – his climate change policies, but we’re still stuck with a redundant Climate Change Department:

Taxpayers will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the federal Climate Change Department – despite most now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

Rudd has created a Department of Magnificent Uselessness in response to a crisis that never existed and against which he will take no action. This is absolutely beautiful.

Unsurprisingly, Rudd's polls are falling off a cliff, as both the right and the left now despise him:

Australian polls have plummeted, and the credibility gap I mentioned earlier has already translated into votes. Whether people agree or disagree with the Emissions Trading Scheme, no one is impressed when a leader hypes something in the most hyperbolic and inflammatory terms, then bails suddenly, as if it was not a big deal.

The front page of The Australian today:

KEVIN Rudd’s personal standing has taken a hammering after his decision to dump his climate change policy last week, and for the first time since 2006 the Coalition has an election-winning lead.

Curiously, while the Labor Party dropped 8%, the Greens primary vote (10%) didn’t pick up a single point. The Coalition (the main opposition) gained just 3% (to 43%), so most of the rest of the disillusioned voters went to “others and independents”. All the commentators are writing it up to the “Climate” issue.

Hey PM - maybe you can hang out with Harry Reid in whatever place it is that washed up old politicians who get thrown out of office go?

Back in the world of business, the UK is aggressively rolling out windmills to generate power. Lots of windmills. They're building them out at sea, even though the towers seem to be sinking into the sea bed. There's a good reason they're built there: build them on land, get sued:

The 150-acre farm was the answer to Julian and Jane Davis's dreams of a quiet life in the country.

He would grow crops while she planned to build a wooden chalet to run reflexology, therapy and counselling sessions.

Their rural peace was shattered, however, when eight giant wind turbines were erected nearby.

Their constant roar was so bad that the couple and their 20-year-old daughter Emily say they were forced to move into a rented home five miles away.

Mr and Mrs Davis have launched a High Court writ claiming £380,000 compensation from the owners of the 320ft turbines, the builders and the landowners.

They're suing for around $75,000 per windmill. But the company will no doubt make it up in volume.

But that's just a down payment. Wait until the companies are hit for bird deaths:

On Aug. 13 [2009], ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

The process of higher mathematics tells us that means each bird death costs a little over $7,000. So how many birds are killed by windmills? Whooo, boy:

Anyone who has investigated the issue of bird mortality and windmills has heard of Altamont Pass, an area of rolling grasslands near San Francisco studded with 4000 wind turbines. Marching across the landscape in platoons and columns, the turbines, each with its whirling blades, resemble supersize barbed wire fencing. Estimates put the number of birds killed annually at Altamont Pass at 4,700, about 1,300 of them raptors (Golden Eagles, hawks, Burrowing Owls and other birds of prey).

That's a cool $32 Million, right there. For one wind farm.

The environmental business is fixin' to get vapor lock on this. You have to do one thing, but that thing is entirely prohibited.

Infinite Loop. n. See Loop, Infinite.

Loop, Infinite. n. See Infinite Loop.

That sound you hear - over the roar of the turbine blades and the screams of falling birds - is the sound of hippy's heads exploding. And I think that stuff is toxic.