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Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism

To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Smarter Critics of Environmentalism, Please

or, Ad Hominems Against the Ad Hominizers; or, People who Use Ad Hominems are Nazis, Unless It's Us.

In a comment thread about one of George Reisman's anti-mutualist posts, Shawn Wilbur remarked:

The section on environmentalism [in Capitalism] is probably the worst in terms of its mean-spiritedness, its tendency to lump [together] radically different tendencies, it's failures to back up broad claims with adequate evidence, etc.

That's borne out in spades, not only in regard to Reisman himself but many of his fellow travellers as well, in a post at Mises Blog. Reisman's remarks on "environmentalists" remind me of nothing so much as an 80-year-old Bircher in high-water pants and a bolo tie, sitting in front of the American Legion post and haranguing everyone in earshot about the "Innernashunnul Commonists."

Reisman, in the main article, denounces "environmentalists" for their resort to ad hominems.

One of the very first replies to my posting of CO2 Science’s journal review "A 221-Year Temperature History of the Southwest Coast of Greenland" was this: "’CO2 Science’ is funded by Exxon. Come on, you guys are usually such independent thinkers—you can do better than rehash this stuff.”

The author of this statement believes that it is sufficient to name the economic affiliation of an individual or organization to be able to dismiss and ignore anything that comes from them. This was a tactic employed for generations by the Marxists. Instead of refuting the criticisms leveled against their doctrines by economists and others, they were content to identify critics as a member of the capitalist class or as having received financial support from capitalists. The Nazis had their own variant of the practice. They were content to identify their critics as Jewish or as somehow supported by Jews or otherwise affiliated with Jews....

In the United States, we are fortunate to have both a long-standing tradition and clear Constitutional protection of a defendant’s right in a criminal trial not to testify. What the Marxists and Nazis and those who are following in their path today are seeking is the equivalent of a prohibition of a defendant’s right to testify.

Individuals, corporations, industries, are to be subject to attack by those who seek to injure or destroy them, and they are to be prohibited from defending themselves by virtue of people being unwilling listen to what they have to say. They are not to be listened to for no other reason than that their avoidance of injury and their survival matters to them. They have an “interest” in the outcome. Yes, they do. And they have a right to be heard—for that very reason! Because their best defense is truth.

He also makes this sweeping generalization:

...the environmental movement would like to destroy... the oil industry, along with the coal and atomic power industries, and is using the alleged connection between global warming and CO2 emissions as its main weapon in its attempt to do so.

Several commenters, starting with CMB at the outset of the thread, were unkind enough to point out the frequent appearence of ad hominem attacks on pro-global warming research--right there at Mises Blog! Here's CMB's comment:

What about all those "Marxists" in the last thread who dismissed all the science surrounding global warming on the basis that scientists are a bunch of statists? Don't they deserve a mention too?

FTR, I find it not good that you compare the people in the last thread who voiced doubts about the reliability of "CO2 Science" to Nazis. The likes of Tokyo Tom and I were arguing in good faith and making reasonable points. Yet here you are comparing us to the worst people in the world! In my opinion--and with the greatest of respect--making wild allegations like that is more a hallmark of a totalitarian way of thinking than the kind of reasonable and polite debate we were entering into.

Dan, taking umbrage on Reisman's behalf, wrote:

I believe they mentioned state sponsored studies as self-interested in response to arguments that the exxon study cannot trusted on the basis of its self interested position. Indeed, they framed the argument as "If the Exxon study is not trustworthy on such and such grounds, then the very same grounds can be used to discount government studies." There is nothing wrong with that kind of argument, as its basically a form of reductio.

As for your whining about being compared to Nazis it has nothing to do with gas chambers, so grow up. The Nazis as well as the Marxists indeed were well known for ad hominem type attacks, in which they attacked the source of an argument rather than the argument itself. Professor Reisman could not have made that any clearer.

Despite Dan's lame attempt to pass off the ad hominems as tu quoque arguments, I myself have seen enough right-libertarians reflexively resorting to ad hominems to know it's a fairly common response to any research that appears dangerously "soft" on global warming. Global warming is commonly dismissed as a trojan horse for the regulatory state. As I recounted in a recent post, Reason's Ron Bailey was himself accused of being an environmentalist dupe for expressing a moderate shift in opinion toward the pro-warming position.

Anyway, quasibill showed up for a rejoinder to Dan:

"The Nazis as well as the Marxists indeed were well known for ad hominem type attacks, in which they attacked the source of an argument rather than the argument itself. Professor Reisman could not have made that any clearer."

Apparently by acting like a Nazi or Marxist, and using ad hominem attacks every chance he gets...

Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee. Reading Reisman, I keep thinking the title ought to be My Struggle Against Looters, Moochers, Whim-Worshippers, and Hippies of the Right--and Methodists!

Quasibill also mocked Reisman's hyperbolic treatment of environmentalists' ad hominem attacks on industry-funded research as tantamount to suppressing testimony in one's own defense.

Don R. responded that Reisman's remark just couldn't be hyperbole, because "the lunatic fringe of the envronmental movement does EVERYTHING possible to silence opposition."

Quasibill stuck to his guns on the charge of hyperbole, speculating on the likely reaction of a court to an attorney who produced this howler:

"your honor, you cannot possibly allow the prosecution to cross examine my client, my eyewitness, and my expert witness on their bias, as it would be akin to prohibiting my client from testifying on his own behalf!"

CMB seized on the "lunatic fringe" qualifier in Dan's comment, pointing out that

[t]he discussion is not about the lunatic fringe. It's about a couple of Austrian-friendly posters in the previous thread (myself included) who don't think the man-made global warming theory is necessarily wrong.

But the Kool-Aid drinkers insisted that all environmentalists belonged to "the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement," and that an environmentalist by definition is one who wants to silence its critics, destroy the oil industry through massive government regulation, etc. Sione, for instance, made this remarkably broad assertion:

The Nazis are about collectivism. Environmentalism necessarily treats people under collectivist premise. These two are simply variants of the same old poison.

CMB responded:

that just isn't true. Typing "Free-market environmentalism" into Wikipedia might be a good start.

Sione came back with this bit of sweet reason:

Adding the tag "free market" does not alter the essential attributes of environmentalism one iota. One may as well rename communism, free market communism.

Environmentalism requires the application of coercive force to ensure all people behave in the manner that environmentalists demand. Options to choose alternatives to the environmentalist ideology are forbidden. People are to be treated as a collective entity, not as individuals.

Indeed just another variant of colectivism.

Sione isn't just saying that it's unlikely, based on his assessment of past experience, that someone might seek to further environmentalist goals through free market means like eliminating energy and transportation subsidies. He's saying that it's logically impossible, because environmentalism is coercive by definition. See, a word means exactly what I want it to mean, no more and no less; it's just a question of who is to be the master. There's glory for you.

Even funnier, one especially frothy-mouthed rug chewer (Mark Humphries) let loose with the shotgun blast below, arguing that ad hominems were only bad when used in regard to industry-funded science! When it came from environmentalists, on the other hand, suggestions of bias weren't bad at all. The difference, see, is that the industry research tells the truth, whereas environmentalist claims about global warming are lies. "Research that agrees with me is true, and research that agrees with my enemies is junk science; and whether money biases research depends on whether it's sponsoring the good guys or the bad guys." Just like the Contras were "freedom fighters" instead of "terrorists," because they were disembowelling peasants for the right reasons. Yeah, I know, I know, this guy really is running around loose. Anyway, here it is for your amusement:

Professor Reisman has pointed out indisputable similarities between ad hominum attacks routinely employed by Stalinist thugs and Nazis, and on this website by those who disparage any connection by science to Exxon or Mobil. The response to Reisman's clearly valid observation is to attempt to smear him as a totalitarian and etc. That response reinforces one of Dr. Reisman's points: Green crusaders are much more interested in shouting down their opposition than they are in carefully thinking about evidence and facts.

The global warming crusade is politics masquerading as "science". One indication of this bait and switch tactic is the argument, continually promoted by left-wing Greens, that a "consensus" of climate scientists support this officially sanctioned thesis. Aside from the questionable truth of this claim (more on this below), consensus has nothing to do with the process of identifying evidence, facts, and the logical integrations tbat lead to new scientific breakthroughs. So scientists properly ought not to be concerned with consensus. Consensus is the obsession of politicans maneuvering to impose their will by force on other people.

Reasonable people should be highly skeptical of much of the "science" produced by contemporary state-sanctioned institutions, because those institutions owe their existence to coercion. They are financed with tax dollars, and more and more they tend to be staffed and run by ambitious political types, who know how to massage the system for grants, prestigious awards, budget boosts, and official approval. Authentic scientists devoted to the adventure of discovery and understanding do not fare well in these institutions of Correctness, because the greater their devotion to science, the higher their resistance to compromising truth for political gain. There are many examples from history of the basic contempt for knowlege fostered by and charateristic of command science. As Ayn Rand explained years ago, force and intelligence are logically and fundamentally antagonistic.

In sharp contrast to the deceit that emerges when science is distorted by a regime of coercion, privately funded science, whether by Exxon or some other organziation, has a major stake in establishing the truth. For private funding is voluntary, so both sponsors and scientists have a huge stake in getting results, which in this case means establishing facts. The privately-funded scientists want to establish facts because their reputations and prospects for advancement in science depend on it. Their sponsors want to establish facts, because such is their only effective defense against those who attack them. "Scientists" who embark on a career in tax-funded politically-driven institutions think of themselves as engaged in science, but to the extent that their job security and advancement depend on acceding to political considerations, they are engaged in pretend-science. And these "other" considerations, whether or not they are acknowleged in public, comprise the whole purpose behind the institution that employs them!

Tokyo Tom, a frequent participant in the environmental threads at Mises Blog, got in a good jibe against Reisman:

What Dr. Reisman fails to note is that, at least as far as disussion on this blog goes, the best target of his very valid point - that one should not dismiss an argument through identifying them with a villanous group - would be himself and perhaps one or two other here.

He also quoted from some dangerously environmentalistic-sounding material (by Roy Cordato) that had somehow managed to slip in at Mises.Org and contaminate their precious bodily fluids:

If a pollution problem exists then its solution must be found in either a clearer definition of property rights to the relevant resources or in the stricter enforcement of rights that already exist. This has been the approach taken to environmental problems by nearly all Austrians who have addressed these kinds of issues (see Mises 1998; Rothbard 1982; Lewin 1982; Cordato 1997). This shifts the perspective on pollution from one of "market failure" where the free market is seen as failing to generate an efficient outcome, to legal failure where the market process is prevented from proceeding efficiently because the necessary institutional framework, clearly defined and enforced property rights, is not in place.

Why, that sounds like... like.... (gasp!) free market environmentalism!

There is, in fact, a respectable segment of environmentalist thought arguing that the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to reduce government-created externalities, in the form of subsidized transportation infrastructure, subsidized sprawl, and wars for oil. And even among geolibertarian environmentalists, the recommended approach is to substitute taxes on pollution and resource consumption for current taxes on labor and capital.

But according to Reisman, Sione, et al, anyone who takes these positions is apparently excluded from the environmentalist category (which is apparently a Platonic eidolon), by definition. I knew the Randroids had gone batshit on the nominalist vs. realist thing, but really!

13 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the continued thrashing of Reisman, who so well deserves it. I'm getting plenty of vicarious thrills out of this. On a related note, a man at the recent LP convention told me that I just *couldn't* be a libertarian and a feminist because feminists were 'collectivists by definition'. This was within about five minutes of meeting me. Sheesh.

I'm undecided on environmentalism myself- I've some sympathy with fairly deep versions of environmentalism *and* with Randian-style technological Prometheanism, and simply have not worked out anything like a resolution on the issue. I can say however that I've never been impressed with most 'free market environmentalists'. They sound too much like 'individualist feminists', who just transparently repackage libertarianism as some kind of attempt to address feminist issues while spending 90% of their time attacking genuine feminists. I can only hope free-market environmentalists are better, and really care about environmentalism as a primary political goal no less than liberty. In which case I would like to see some analyses of air pollution or endangered species issues which aren't just concerned with how sate regulation won't solve the problem.

The stupidest passage from George Reisman must have been the one where he said that *if* global warming were true, then the only 'rational', 'objective' response would be for private individuals to buy more air conditioners and sunblock. To be honest, I don't think a non-libertarian environmentalist trying to mock libertarians could craft a better parody.

BTW, what exactly does 'rug chewing'? mean on your side of the street? Just curious.

July 26, 2006 2:03 AM  
Blogger Vache Folle said...

You could have a whole blog dedicated to Reisman and his ilk if your bent was comedy.

I frequently find that folks conflate strongly held opinions on just about anything with "collectivism". If I say I am feminist, they assume that I want to force feminism down their throats. If I remark that I am green, they assume that I aim to violate their property rights. They cannot comprehend that I might have preferences while at the same time eschewing coercion to compel others to live in accordance with my preferences.

July 26, 2006 6:39 AM  
Blogger Sergio Méndez said...

Good post as usual Kevin. As far I am concerned, most libertarians are to me "conservatives who like to smoke pot", since they so deep in the buisness of being apologists and lackey dogs of big buisness no matter what they do (including polluting this planet to death). And I am also with Lady Aster, when she says she finds libertarian environmentalism weak: how libertarians - and I mean in general, including the left fringe- propose to solve enviromental problems WITHOUT restrictions and regulations (that in many case will end violating private property rights)? It seems to me that, even among left libertarians which I admire, "property rights" have become something almost sacred, to the point that things like enviroment are just sacrficable if necesary (please, show me wrong, I am sure if anybody in the world can is you Kevin).

July 26, 2006 6:43 AM  
Blogger Larry Gambone said...

How ironic the accusation that enviros are rank collectivists comparable with Nazis or Stalinists. A common attack by the old-style left on the Green Party is that they are right-wing, precisely because they promote small busines and a number of market-based solutions to the environmental problems. While there is an authoritarian aspect, the thing that I have always found most positive about these people is that they have a decentralist and consensus based vision, unlike old-style social democracy which is centralist and "ram-it-through if you have the power to do."

July 26, 2006 7:07 AM  
Blogger Doc said...

Wow - why not design a post for a doctor lenny comment. i consider the inconvenient truth to be more damaging to the environmentalist position than if they hadn't exaggerated to the point of disbelief. But the whole argument show a definite lack of understanding of the underlying atmospheric chemistry process. I put up the climate quiz the other day - so i am in tune here. Let me try to put sergio's question in perspective.
i am a property owner and seen by some as a wacked out constitutionalist and property rights advocate. I am seen by others as a whacked out environmentalist because i prefer being outside away from traffic. But what i do as a scientist is model natural process, forcusing on decay and decomposition. nature provides a huge organic scaffolding that places substrates - things to get worked on - into positions where they can be worked on.
The more i discover about nature's guilds and processes, the more i see organized queueing based on mathematical relationships. I feel that these relationships can be applied to everything, including human and animal behavior, austrian economics and ayn rand.
i serve on a watershed council that operates by consensus - the Partnership for Umpqua Rivers. A pseudo-government busy-body organization to prop rights activits. As a scientist, i laugh at some of the 'facts' brought into science debate. But when i first got to the table in 1997, the facts had no data to support them - now the PUR has a complete monitoring for hire program based on accurately calibrated information and graphically displayed through GPS. All that knowledge and we still have the same arguments on cutting old growth timber or inserting a cross country gas line.
I would never dream of taking the science that i hear at a council meeting as science fact without talking to the proncipals for reference data. Often, what they show me has been scientifically discredited in the literature - er improved upon to be approved. I fear some very intellegent people made up a lot of what we call science fact in the last century. Science today is applied engineering and research is a nasty word when the people think research is development. How many bulbs did edison build>
Perserverence and reason to address every counter-argument internally first is the crux of the scientific method. Today - science is used to support POVs, not to discover anything relevant. On the other hand, i'd stand behind any and all data published by the PUR and provided in documentation - because we have a scientist looking and a quality control program acceptible to the PTB in our fields of expertise. But i do check - and i am not enamored with ISO14XXX or 9XXX or any beaurocracy of judgement.

Depends on the venue, the depth and the breadth as t what i can believe. But it has to be consisten, or i have to change my thought to make it so. Paradigm shifts have a way of surprising people and the key liquid in this world is water, not oil. We know what happens when shaken : water does not mix with oil. Thanks for the opportunity to rant - i'll cross-post this at the zone.

July 26, 2006 7:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sergio,

viewed properly, property rights are nothing more than a way of preventing centralized power and the inevitable abuses that come from it. It is an axiom that positions of great power attract the attentions of those who we least want to wield it.

Now, I know it's hard for those like Reisman and his followers to believe, but people DO value clean air and water. Furthermore, I think there is a very strong security based argument for bio-diversity (it's a fairly complex one, though) that I think many people would accept in broad form.

Because of this, I think an open market which respects property rights is MORE likely to reflect certain environmental concerns than the current system does. The key is allowing local areas apply the broad principles in ways that make the most sense for those localities, taking into account local circumstances. I think much of the opposition to environmental values derives from the inherent negatives involved in central planning (i.e., the inability to adjust for the variation in local conditions), and not from the environmental values themselves.

History shows to me, at least, that centralized power is in fact one of the greatest enemies of the environment. That's why I see property rights as one of the greatest allies to the environment.

July 26, 2006 7:56 AM  
Blogger Larry Gambone said...

A couple more thoughts. I think the proposed emission laws have to be seen in perspective. Their goal is to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Compare these proposed laws, with only two examples of actual existing collectivist interference. A million people are in gulags and millions of lives are ruined because of crackpot drug laws. The US spends $500 billion on killing people and handouts to the military industrial complex. Why get so worked up over environmental regulations when there are collectivist horrors a thousand times worse already in existence?
The second point is that regulation (and social democratic welfare measures) are the price you pay for having corporate capitalism. It is one of those rare either-or situations. If you don't want regulation and a welfare state you have to get rid of corporate capitalism and have an economy where none of the economic actors are privileged by the state. One thing you cannot have – if you value democracy, freedom, human life, the environment, that is, is an unfettered corporate capitalism. This would be a recipe for barbarism, and this seems to be exactly what the vulgar libertarians want. To be a consistent libertarian and not just a shill for the greed creeps, you simply must be opposed to corporate capitalism. Besides, the corporation is nothing more than a collectivist form of capitalism anyway, or as I call it "The state socialism of the rich."

July 26, 2006 8:32 AM  
Blogger Kevin Carson said...

Lady Aster,

Re the genius you talked to at the LP convention, I've seen similarly rigorous "methodological individualism" from some quarters whenever the subject of race, class or gender comes up. Of course, that doesn't stop them from making general statements about categories of people themselves.

You might be right about self-proclaimed "free-market environmentalists" as a movement that actually uses that label; Ron Bailey used the term, I think, so that's a big caveat. But there are a lot of people who take a free market approach to environmental problems in a very constructive way. The use of property rights, whether individual or a regulated common, is an excellent way to internalize costs; and state subsidies to cost externalization are probably the single biggest source of energy and resource consumption.

"Rug-chewer" for me was an allusion to Hitler in his last days, who (under the influence of the heavy regime of uppers, downers, and mood-control drugs his personal physician kept him on) often escalated his ranting fits into full-blown seizures, began foaming at the mouth, and fell down and started chewing the rug.

I don't know if Humphries is into any other form of rug-chewing. Heh.

Vache Folle,

The people who are most scrupulous about "methodological individualism" go so far as to refer to that big hot thing in the sky in terms of its individual hydrogen and helium atoms, instead of as "the sun." Except, again, when they want to make social generalizations that are meaningful to *them*.

It's a strawman, of course. Aside from the more Hegelian mystics among Marx's followers, nobody really considers social class to be some "entity" with a will or mind of its own. Just a useful abstraction for describing the interactions of individuals. And I think these people know it. Their cries of "collectivism" are just a way to throw a monkey-wrench in intelligent debate by depriving the enemy of any terms he can get a conceptual grip on (see Eleventh Edition, Newspeak Dictionary).

Sergio,

IMO, at least, the main source of damage to the environment is state intervention to prevent cost internalization. Regulatory preemption of tort liability for pollution, subsidies to transportation and other energy consumption, massive subsidies and regulatory contributions to sprawl, the sweetheart deals provided mining, logging and oil interests on government land, etc., etc. If government land were treated as a regulated common owned by the local community, transportation were operated on a cost basis, and pollutors and other malfeasors were assessed civil damages commensurate with the harm they caused, the problem would be largely eliminated.

Larry,

Good point. I find that most of these "petty bourgeois" social philosophies of decentralized economics and distributive ownership are attacked equally by the mainstream Right and Left. I've been called a "Marxist" by Reisman and a "goose-stepping, Rand-worshipping Nazi" (for advocating free markets) by the Circle-A shitheads at Infoshop.

Dr. Lenny,

Your comments on the popularization of science are well taken. I haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, but I hear its worst fault is the amount of time taken up by the personality cult of Gore, including lots of panning over rapturous faces in the crowds at his lectures.

quasibill,

I agree. The problem with Reisman and his groupies is that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that the present system, at least insofar as it includes environmental degradation, results from anything more than free individual choice. If they acknowledged the role of the state in creating environmental externalities, then it would obviously follow that there's something to be done in the policy arena.

Larry,

On the emissions laws, I confess I don't devote a lot of energy to outrage. I oppose them in principle as a way of dealing with the problem. But in general, as I said about the minimum wage and welfare, I'm a lot more angry about the leg-breakers than about the crutch-distributors. When the state creates privilege and externality, the resulting effects will lead to one of two things: 1) countervailing state action to alleviate the worst effects of privilege; or 2) elimination of state-enforced privilege. People who don't get outraged about privilege and subsidy shouldn't complain when the statists decide to do something about the problem in their own way. And flat-earthers like Reisman's disciples who refuse to acknowledge that the evils of existing capitalism reflect any state leg-breaking, deserve the credit for the negative connotations that free market libertarianism carries for most people. They've decided to prostitute their "free market" principles to the lords of the Earth. If that's an ad hominem, so fucking be it.

July 26, 2006 11:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"They've decided to prostitute their "free market" principles to the lords of the Earth. If that's an ad hominem, so fucking be it."

With all due respect, Kevin, the above is an ad feminam. Some of us free-market girls object when sex work is used as a metaphor for a lack of standards. Besides, 'to politician oneself' would be a far more appropriate metaphor for Reisman's behaviour.

BTW, did Hitler really munch rugs? I thought that was a satirical image from old WWII propaganda cartoons.

July 26, 2006 12:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Incidentally, for my own take, not on global warming per se (since I lack the expertise to say much of interest about that) but on the ideological context of the global warming debate, see here (scroll down) and my follow-up here (scroll even farther down).

July 26, 2006 2:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't understand all the confusion here...

the proper way to analyze the root cause is to work backwards from the real property rights violation.

externalities are nothing more than the shifting of costs off of those who benefit from using the sky as a sink beyond Locke's proviso (the sustainable yield) onto society.

the REAL property rights violation is the externality becomes nothing more than an illegal, involuntary TAX (Thomas Knapp prefers the term "fee") on the wages of those who are being excluded from an equal access right to using the sky as a sink up to the sustainable yield.

July 26, 2006 3:43 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Point taken, Lady Aster. Unlike a politician, a prostitute would actually be creating value for someone.

Roderick Long,

I take a somewhat agnostic position on GW myself. I figure that CO2 emissions have some tendency, ceteris paribus, to raise temperature, and that such currently high levels of CO2 are likely to have some effect. Beyond that, though, I just say that internalizing the costs of energy and transportation consumption is the right way to go regardless.
--Kevin Carson

July 26, 2006 5:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post.

I have been interested in this problem
for a while. Why do people, who tacitly accept the Coase principle, oppose the CO2 cap&trade program we call Kyoto, while people who are for Kyoto oppose cap&trade on principle for every other pollutant (sulfur dioxide, mercury, etc.)?

I am encouraged that there is a
growing body
of free market environmentalists out there.

Finally, when I posted a criticism of the Pimentel/Patzek paper (and the press coverage of it), I found that I got about 4 different tpyes of responses, some of which were contradictory:

1) Good Job! Biodiesel rules (and no criticism of any biofuel can be true).

2) Good Job! Pimentel is an Oil Shill (nevermind his pro-alt-energy stance).

3) Boo! Arguing in favor of biofuels is tantamount to accepting the continued existence of the evil Car Culture.

4) Boo! Arguing in favor of biofuels is tantamount to supporting the corporate welfare that supports ethanol and soybean production.

July 27, 2006 7:31 AM  

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