Recognizing a trend we’ve reported on, Time magazine notes that efforts to make money off of global warming hysteria and other allegedly eco-friendly trends are actually harming the environment and stealing from consumers.

The story, "The Clean Energy Scam," notes for example that the rush to create ethanol fuel and other biofuels is actually expensive and environmentally harmful:

several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

The article unfortunately accepts the false premise that carbon dioxide creates global warming and that manmade carbon dioxide emissions are appreciably heating up the earth to crisis proportions, but it’s right to note that the biofuels fad is a scam.

Naturally, of course, Time didn’t figure out any of this until left-wing goofballs smartened up on the issue and began protesting against biofuels, but we’ll gladly accept late converts.

Even the United Nations, a remarkably stupid and sclerotic organization, has begun to recognize that biofuels are an inefficient, expensive, and wasteful endeavor. 

You can read "The Clean Energy Scam" here.