It has done harm. One example: People, at Gore's urging, started switching to ethanol as a fuel source. That meant farmers quit growing food crops and began growing fuel crops. The cost of food went up, and is some areas, people went hungry.
Corn Ethanol: The Fuel to Higher Food Prices
People went hungry because the economy bottomed out thanks to the adminstration of the last 8 years.
This'll be a difficult one to solve, as neither of us are economists nor well versed in the world of econ profession, nor do I know of anyone on the forum so far that seems to be. We'll just have to leave both points at check and move on to something else debatable enough, and agree to disagree on that part. I can add that I know sugar canes are apart of the ethanol production, esp. from S. America, but I haven't seen their prices jump or heard of it, personally.
I do give all credits to this guy on the petroleum market crash though, no matter how lucky he got with his theory.
How is this related to Cheney?
It starts from darkdog's opinion in this thread. Gore's supposedly using "fear mongering" (scare tactics to me) to instill anxiety and mesmerize the people he speaks to, to listen up to him and "go green", but some are thinking his ulterior motives are for monetary purposes. If you start from around my long-winded
post on page5, you'll see where this Gore-power stuff came out.
PS. A nice read for anyone interested about biofuels (corn, sugarcane, etc) from TIME:
The Trouble With Biofuels - TIME
I read this some time ago and found it quite interesting, perhaps you may as well.
Another one:
The Clean Energy Scam - TIME
The one I saw in the magazine had nice charts to show you biofuel production, consumption, and usage by countries, it is rather unfortunate the web articles don't have them.