Audiotomb brings up an aspect of the push for environmental awareness that drives me crazy too. His example of efficient vs. inefficient ethanol production is spot on. Everyone is clamoring so hard for economic advantage and a share of the pork pie that policy makers quickly lose sight of scientific reality. The path Washington is advocating isn't going to do anything but drive up food costs and appease the agricultural lobbies. Even efficient methanol production with sugar cane is fraught with indirect costs, just look at the environmental mess big sugar has made of the everglades ecosystem. I'm a member of the Sierra Club because I feel legislative bodies need balanced lobbying, but half of what they advocate is pie in the sky and a denial of reality IMO. I suspect one aspect of the environmental movement that drives a lot of us crazy is the "I want my cake and eat it too" attitude, the refusal to recognize that nothing is free and that every choice has consequences. The great landscape photographer Ansel Adams advocated nuclear energy for years to the chagrin of his fellow Sierra club members. He was adamant that you had to accept that if we wanted to have electricity in abundance and reduced emissions, nuclear power was the best balance of benefit and risk. Unless something has gotten by me, France and England have used nuclear power without any Chernobyls or Three Mile Islands.
Another example is environmental groups refusal to consider diesel engine technology because they don't want to trade the problems of CO2 and low fuel mileage for the problem of increased particulates. European car makers have pretty well killed that objection in the last few years with new technologies, but the Sierra Club still carries on it's harangue against diesel engines.
If environmental advocacy would accept that every technology carries risks and rewards and the real course forward is to find the best compromise instead of holding out for the perfect solution (which will never arrive,) we might make some headway towards real progress.
