UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF ACTION
Consumers can't catch a break

   Even if you believe CO2 emissions cause global warming, there are unintended consequences when the government tries to solve this imaginary problem.

   The Wall Street Journal reports that a proposal circulating in Britain would establish personal CO2 rationing. Each person would be allotted some CO2 emissions. Every gasoline purchase, air conditioner turned on and jet flight would be charged against your account. Run out of credits, and you must buy more from anyone with a surplus. So much for the idea that only polluting factories pay a price to fight global warming. Of course, administering the plan would cost billions of dollars in taxes.

   Forbes.com reports companies such as Chiquita Brands are considering costs of being sued - or criminally prosecuted - under the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley Act for not accurately disclosing "carbon footprints" to investors. Chiquita would have to calculate greenhouse gas emissions created by fertilizing banana trees in Central America, and emissions generated transporting fruit by truck or ship. Then different types of farms and varying sizes of fruit must be factored in, differentiating organically grown from traditionally grown. Energy, waste, water use, travel, storage in refrigerated containers and even transport in retailers' trucks are all factors in determining the carbon footprint.

   Ironically, environmentalists now oppose creation of a 150-mile route crossing the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California to deliver electricity from a planned collection of 30,000 38-foot-by-40-foot solar dishes near El Centro. The double irony is they claim not only would the route ravage habitat, but, by supporting polluting facilities, the project would increase global warming more than it prevents. The solar farm, of course, is a direct response to the government's global-warming-inspired mandate that utilities provide 20 percent of electricity from renewable power sources by 2010.

   Global warming alarmists aren't only short-sighted, they are menacing. The U.N.'s chief climate scientist implies unintended consequences are worth the cost because "we have a window of opportunity of only seven years" to avoid catastrophe.

   Maybe that's why James Hansen, the NASA scientist given much credit for whipping up global warming alarmism, has called for corporate executives to be tried for high crimes against humanity for spreading doubt about global warming. Who would have thought challenging an idea might result in a prison term? And this in a country that supposedly honors and protects the right of people to disagree with one another.

   A California newspaper columnist has suggested we can curb global warming and still build concrete freeways by replacing greenhouse gas-emitting cement with something else. The problem is that the recommended substance is a byproduct of burning coal. Apparently the columnist missed the report that a Georgia judge recently blocked a coal-burning plant construction because burning coal emits greenhouse gases.

   We need no more recent example of unintended consequences than the diversion of corn crops to create ethanol, which turns out to be no more green-friendly than gasoline, but has created food shortages and driven up prices.

   Such shortsightedness may explain the I-was-for-it-before-I-wasagainst-it flip-flop of presidential candidate John McCain, who first called ethanol a "vital, vital alternative energy source," but now says it "does nothing to increase our energy independence."

   Unintended consequences keep multiplying. But global warming alarmists may finally have gone too far. Now they blame flat-panel, big-screen TVs for accelerating global warming. We suspect a lot of people will see the unintended consequences behind that looming ban.

DRUG WAR AND DRUG USE STATS DON'T CONNECT

   Let's say you lay traps in your house to catch mice. After a year of this practice you have failed to catch any mice. Would you continue laying traps? Probably not.

   After nearly 40 years of fighting the drug war in the United States, we have failed to have any significant impact on drug use in America. A recent report by the World Health Organization puts America at the highest rate of illegal drug use among several First World nations.

   Jacob Sullum, senior editor of libertarian Reason Magazine, analyzed the information and found further that increases and decreases in drug use in America seem to bear no relationship with government or law enforcement efforts: "Although marijuana arrests have increased by more than 150 percent since 1990, marijuana use seems to be just as common today as it was then, if not more so."

   Even more striking, Sullum noticed that drug use in America was significantly higher than in those European nations with looser drug enforcement policies. Twice as many Americans per capita have used marijuana as the Dutch and eight times as many have used cocaine.

   Restrictions on supplies used to manufacture methamphetamine have cut down on the number of meth labs, but dealers have simply shifted to meth manufactured in Mexico. Meth use doesn't seem to have gone down.

   If drug policies have such little effect on drug use, why are we continuing to fight this war? Don't blame it on the violent gangs. The gangs exist because of the black market caused by laws against drug use, not because of the drugs themselves. Don't blame it on Mexico or Colombia. Only four percent of Mexico's and Colombia's residents have used cocaine. All the violence and drug lords in Latin America exist to serve our citizens' demands.

   So many people have died fighting this war, based on an unwinnable attack on the fundamentals of economics - law enforcement officers, bystanders, even children. What will be the tipping point to bring this country around to rethinking this entire strategy?

   Is it because of the massive bureaucracy? How many thousands of government employees rely on the drug war continuing for their livelihoods? To them, we would ask if the risks and losses are worth it - to know that periodically, one of them would end up dead in a fight that can never be won the way we're fighting it.

   For that matter, just think about what else we could be doing with these people in this innovative nation if they weren't stuck enforcing harsh drug policies that do not and will not work.

   It's disturbing to think that the entire point of the drug war is to give people jobs, but what we're doing is the equivalent to paying for somebody to keep putting out traps that aren't catching mice.