Paul Krugman agrees with Rolling Stone and me, and we're fast-tracking

Now there's an odd triple. In today's Grains Gone Wild, Krugman says that "We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake." Click the "biofuel" label for more on this here.

Krugman waits only until his next sentence to make one of those non-predicting predictions, the kind where he's right either way: "But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past." Or, of course, maybe something can be done. It's not clear. Is anything clear? It's clear that using food as fuel is a mistake. Bio-diesel from stuff that would otherwise be garbage is one thing, but turning cropland over to raising fuel is another matter. So where can the pushback come from? The leftist environmentalist Democrats are in the bag on this. Congressmen of either party from corn-raising states are in the bag. Will these people ever admit to making a mistake, and sponsor repeal of their own legislation? Damn, it would be refreshing to see. Krugman is a Democrat, though, so he can see no way out, and is left with a conclusion based on a begged question. There's a hidden assumption in the last sentence, that "cheap oil, may be a thing of the past." Assuming nothing changes. And why would anything change? Surely all the oil fields have been discovered [Falklands? Brazil? Bakken? Anyone?], surely Iraq will never get their oil on line, surely things can only get worse.


All because of the war, of course. You gotta blame Bush. Whatever will the BDS sufferers do next year? And the global warming. Another quote: "[B]ad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages." Note the weasel logic: "probably related"; but "politicians and goverments … [no "probably," not even a "might"] … bear some responsibility for food shortages."

The food shortages would be why we must get out of the way of giving the next president power for Fast-tracking climate policies. You knew this was coming. As the first commenter says,

Now that highly regarded scientists are getting the word out (although the press won't report it - any of it here at the D.C.?) these laws MUST be fast tracked before people realize what a fraud Global Warming is. It's about government control of people's lives, not "saving the planet." It's about becoming wealthy, as Al Gore has, on the issue. Data show that Earth has been in a cooling trend for the past ten years.

The increasing urgency of the warmingists reminds me of those offers you get in the junk mail: "Limited time only! Buy NOW before it's TOO LATE!"

There are comments on the Krugman column at Althouse.

Update: More on the Krugman column from Tom Maguire: The Eerily Prescient Professor Krugman, and Paul Krugman, Lying To Protect The Democrats.

Everybody's against green fuel this week: here's Ron Bailey, with a good quote from Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, "Biofuels are purely and simply the biggest Green mistake we've ever made and we're still making it."