Has Al Gore Converted?

You know the winds have shifted when Al Gore says the ethanol industry serves no useful purpose.

What? The sainted AlGore is against all these government subsidies for ethanol because it's a fraud?

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm stuck in an episode of Fringe.

Said AlGore:

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," Al Gore told a gathering of clean energy financiers in Greece this week. The benefits of ethanol are "trivial," he added, but "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

That's true of any government subsidy. All anyone has to do is look at farm subsidies in general, a practice that has been going on for generations. All such subsidies do is waste tax dollars propping up some operation or industry that will no longer feel the need to change or innovate to the point where it no longer needs subsidies.

All of that aside, one must wonder if Al Gore has realized the error of his ways, or is he positioning himself to make another few hundred million dollars with government subsidies for yet another alternative energy scheme?

Only time will tell.