Mark Steyn‘s latest back-of-the-issue column in National Review takes aim at the silliness associated with efforts to promote “green jobs” as a way to boost the American economy.
Titled “Zamboni Baloney,” Steyn’s piece starts with the story of the problems caused during the recent Olympic Games when organizers replaced traditional ice-resurfacing Zambonis with a “green” alternative that failed, causing delays and prompting at least one high-profile speed skater ? American Shani Davis ? to withdraw from an event for fear of taking a fall on the less-than-ideal ice.
While that story gives Steyn a chance to showcase his usual wit, he saves the heavier ammunition for other examples of “green jobs” mania:
[T]he European Union grandees and eco-poseurs of the U.S. Congress who mandated sudden, transformative increases in “biofuel” production and at a stroke turned the food supply into part of the energy industry and made grain more lucrative as fuel than as sustenance weren’t there in Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Mexico, and even Italy when the food riots broke out. Nor was Al Gore able to be up there on every one of California’s 14,000 abandoned wind turbines. They’re not entirely useless, not if you’re an ornithosadist who enjoys seeing our feathered friends sliced and diced by the Condor Cuisinarts.
These are the “green jobs” that Barack Obama says will both save the planet and revitalize the economy: electric Zambonis, foil insulation, wind turbines, corn-powered cars. They will put America back on the cutting edge. In reality, like the spiked cutting edges of the electric ice resurfacer, they’ll leave the economy full of artificial speed bumps that, when not actually sending you crashing to the ground, will make it harder and harder ever to get going.
