Wishful thinking. I want it to be so so it will be. That’s how my toddler thinks and that’s O.K. That’s not how an Administration should govern. But alas, enter Obama and his wishful Solyndra the Chevy Volt.

From Today’s NYPost:

At the Detroit Auto Show this week, CEO Dan Akerson admitted that General Motors may have to cut back production of the Chevrolet Volt because the 4,600-plus Volts on the market now are about three times the monthly sales. Other figures put the GM hybrid car’s inventory at an outrageous 120-plus days.
By most accounts, “Government Motors” has stuck with the Volt mainly to please the Obama administration, which still owns a third of its stock in the wake of the 2009 government “rescue” of the company. But just how badly is the effort faring? Well, consider the 1,529 sold in December.
We’ll let you read the rest in the Post item but knowing that
Taxpayers are …ponying up a $7,500-per-car subsidy on a car that is generally priced around $44,500
Is enough to pierce your bipartisan peace pipe. I’d really like a &7,500 taxpayer gift to go towards a new car payment for me is what a reasonable person might say when seeing that they are funding such a fool’s errand.

Now let’s go to this from Tuesday’s NYTimes:
A fine for not using a biofuel that doesn’t exist:

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
More:
Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide.

Note: Matt Wald is a stand up guy at the Times, not lap dog. Nice piece, Wald.

And on that same day’s NYTimes Business section was a story on "The Alternatives: Wanted or Not," that deals very slightly with the fact that people just don’t want the hybrids that the Obama government is forcing down all our throats.

In the race to claim ever-higher fuel-economy numbers and keep up with government regulations, automakers are rolling out hybrids and electric cars aplenty at this week’s Detroit auto show.
If only buyers were arriving as fast as the cars.
And:
“The market is going in one direction and fuel-economy regulations are going the other direction,” said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of the automotive information Web site Edmunds.com. “Just because people start building more of something doesn’t mean the segment grows.”
Regardless, the automakers have little choice but to develop and try to push more hybrids as they prepare for fuel-efficiency requirements that call for significant increases later this decade.

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Now the piece has not laid out the very stark choices and lack thereof of what consumers will face in the market place in years to come with flat technology and ever more limited car choices. Buy or else is the Obama’s answer to this issue.

All this doesn’t mean we don’t have an issue with greenhouse gases, but I’d love to see ,say Facebook, being forced to annihilate themselves by limiting consumer choice to one picture per wall because of government fiat that the web is overused. Or demanding Facebook slow loading time way way down to ease the burden of web traffic.

Yes, we can always jack up Facebook to a dollar per page view as a way to control overuse of web traffic or slow loading times down to a minute per page view. But forcing us to go backwards in technology in terms of deliverables to the consumer is dumb. Not too American.
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More from the Times on Hybrid costs:
Hybrids and electric cars typically cost at least several thousand dollars more than their conventional counterparts. BMW said Monday that its ActiveHybrid 5 would be priced at $8,700 above the gas-powered 535i. The Volt costs nearly twice as much as the similarly sized Chevy Cruze, after a $7,500 federal tax credit.
Most consumers want to be able to recoup the additional cost of an alternative-technology vehicle within a year, Mr. Anwyl said. At today’s gas prices, the payback generally takes several years, if not more.
Automakers said shortages of batteries and other parts also held back sales in 2011.

My toddler wants little green unicorns to come over for a play date. At this rate, I guess my best bet is to ask the Obama Admin to tax the citizens if one doesn’t show up.

Now all this doesn't mean we dont' have a problem. That is very much in play. Here is a statement from the UN this month:
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The UN World Meteorological Organization reported today that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are growing and reached a record level last year. "The atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases due to human activities has yet again reached record levels since pre-industrial time," WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement.

And this as well:
Global temperature statistics show that 13 of the warmest years ever recorded occurred over the past decade and a half, proving "unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities," Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the UN World Meteorological Organization, said today in a statement. The climb in temperatures is expected to make extreme weather patterns such as floods and droughts even more severe, according to a WMO report.
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We are not posting on the science of global warming as that is a very detailed issue, We are saying that yes the is a problem, albeit we don't know how treacherous it is, and that the Obama Admin is useless in solving it.

-------------links:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gm_flop_in_green_cSg...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/energy-environment/companies-...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/business/wanted-or-not-alternative-fue...