No Free Energy Episode #4

I'm passionate about this issue because a lot of people think . It's too bad Einstein is now alive; I'd really like to hear his view on this issue. In my opinion, it comes down to this fundamental law: energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.

Notes from the McLaughlin Group:

AL GORE (former vice president): (From videotape.) Tipper and I will go to Oslo and I will accept this award on behalf of all of those who have been working so long and so hard to try to get the message out about this planetary emergency.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to Al Gore. Gore has awakened the world to the reality and the danger of global warming. This alert and the scientific evidence behind it has set off a worldwide scramble to profit from a tectonic shift.

There's big money to be made in the green gold. The gold rush of yesteryear has become the green rush of today. General Electric, General Motors, Archer Daniels Midland, ExxonMobil, are racing to discover how, through their own businesses, they can feed the demand for green -- green fuels, green subsidies, green mandates.

You've heard of blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. Well, climbing up the ladder, we now have green-collar jobs. The Credit Suisse Group has introduced a new, quote-unquote, "global warming index." It lists new green investment stocks and other green instruments for major banks. Over the next 25 years, global demand for energy will climb by 40 percent.

This combination of profit motive, market incentives and government regulation has unleashed billions of dollars in new research on two fronts: New energy and efficient energy. Economists predict that this wave of innovation will reshape world markets as radically as the computer boom of the '90s.

But skeptics say we've heard that song before, notably in the '70s during the energy crisis. Washington then subsidized synthetic fuel. Washington then subsidized solar panels. Nuclear took on a new life. Detroit retooled; built engines that delivered more miles to the gallon and a catalytic converter built around it.

Then, after all this commotion, after all this reaction to the escalation of oil prices, the price plummeted and the big green balloon burst.

Question: So which will it be this time, a green boom or a green bust? Pat Buchanan.

MR. BUCHANAN: It'll be both, John. It's going to start off with a boom because there's an enormous political movement to transfer wealth and power to the federal government and from nation-states to international bureaucrats who can control the planet and the rest of it.

Businesses are going to reach into this thing and make all the money they can on good capitalist principles. The media love an end- of-the-world scenario; nothing better than that for ratings. And it's all going to continue, John, until we're going to wake up and find the ocean did not rise 20 feet at all and the planet is warming very slowly and it's not a crisis.

Then they'll find a new one, like bird flu or nuclear winter. They find these every decade, one or another. And then it will go away and everybody will have made a lot of money, and government everywhere will have more power. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So global warming is the big lie. Is that what you're saying?

MR. BUCHANAN: It's not a lie. It's occurring. But it's a big con.
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Pat, you are my hero. I am certain that 30 or 50 years from now when America will be a 2nd or 3rd rate economic power, people will say, "Buchanan was right".