The perennially optimistic strained to find evidence of a new centrism in President Obama's State of the … Read More.
Let Them Eat Ethanol?
They don't have enough to eat. Five people are dead in Port Au Prince, Haiti after a week of food riots. Unions in Burkina Faso have called a general strike to protest the high cost of grain. Food riots have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other nations. In Manila, police with M-16s have supervised the sale and distribution of subsidized grain. Hoarders have been threatened with life imprisonment. In Thailand and Pakistan, troops are guarding fields and warehouses. In Egypt, the army has been called out to bake bread. Even in the United States, a run on rice has caused big-box retailers Sam's Club and Costco to limit the amount of rice consumers can purchase per visit (though the cap is extremely generous — each customer can buy four 20 pound bags of rice per day at Costco).
The inflation in food prices worldwide — prices have soared 83 percent in the past three years, according to the World Bank — has a number of causes. Certainly increased demand from India and China — nations that until quite recently maintained hundreds of millions of people at subsistence levels — is part of the explanation. The Chinese and Indians are eating better, but their enhanced diets are putting pressure on supply. And our good friends at OPEC can take a bow. The oil sheikhs and that great tribune of the poor, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, are doing their parts to plunge millions of poor people around the globe into starvation by artificially boosting the price of oil (which is required to grow food and transport it).
We in the U.S. and the European Union are not blameless either. Not by a long shot. In our search for cleaner energy we jumped aboard the "biofuels" bandwagon. This debacle should be an object lesson. Fighting global warming (if there is global warming) is a tricky business and can only be undertaken after careful review of the costs and benefits.
It seemed like such a painless solution. It fits on a bumper sticker. In fact, I saw one yesterday: "Don't burn fuel. Grow it." The EU adopted a goal of producing 10 percent of its fuel for road transportation from biofuels by 2020.
The U.S. government (cheered on by the agriculture industry and environmentalists) adopted a mandate of 36 billion gallons of biofuel production by 2022 — a five-fold increase over 2006 levels amounting to 28 percent of the U.S. grain harvest. Congress and the president joined hands to pass this feel-good legislation just when, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, new data were demonstrating that biofuels cost more energy than they save. "…When the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol 'pays back' the carbon released by land-use change."
The amount of global warming that this investment in biofuels was designed to obviate was truly trifling (if GW exists at all). Economist Bjorn Lomborg's work (see "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It") is absolutely essential to understanding this issue. He has pointed out that even if all of the world's industrial nations reduced their outputs of greenhouse gases by 20 percent as the Kyoto Protocol would have required by 2012 (and many of the signatories are not on track), the reduction of global warming would have been 0.1 F degrees lower than it would otherwise have been, thus delaying global warming by a mere five years.
The costs, on the other hand, of meeting these or other targets are substantial. There are the opportunity costs — funds spent on reducing global warming are diverted from other worthy efforts like supplying clean drinking water to Africa, fighting malaria, and improving flood control infrastructure. And as we are now seeing on our front pages, there are direct costs like dramatically increasing the price of food and pushing millions of poor people to desperation.
"When millions of people are going hungry," Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister told the Journal, "it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels."
This is not to suggest that all efforts to conserve energy or maintain the environment are folly. Rather, it's a cautionary tale. How much environmental improvement do we really get and — this is paramount — at what price?
To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
Thanks for keeping up with all the ways "Tax & Spend" Liberals continue to find ways to 'guzzle' the gas machines and literally use them in every motorcade I've looked at in the past thirty (30) years, from local to state to federal.
I've stated for years 'that when government got in bed with the farmers', stopping the usage of American soil and paying Farmers not to use their land and of course, this was so all foreign countries could own more of America, right?
Bottom Line "IT'S TIME FOR FARMERS TO START GROWING CORN, MAKING ETHANOL FOR, AND TOTALLY CUT OUT THE FOREIGN OIL COMPANIES!"
Taxpayers don't need anymore "We're looking after you and your best interest, and you can catch a ride on Hi-Tran Buses (that's costing Taxpayers millions yearly), 'Car pool or ride a cycle' (yeah right-with crime so bad and caused by 'you know who' this isn't even a possibility, now is it? The only things being looked after is the Tax and Spend politicians, their stock and retirement accounts being funded by car makers and oil companies.
This is why nothing has been done - it's called "Greedy Politicians" and Taxpayers can 'like it or lump it' as the politicians state daily.
It's like Obama and his "I don't take money from oil companies nor Washington Lobbyists!" He didn't think that Taxpayers would be smart enough to figure out "he's taking from all lobbyists (maybe not directly from Washington)and anyone that'll give money to him!" His statement about the Pennsylvania folks (and I'm sure this is how he feels about the rest of the world) tells Taxpayers he shouldn't have been listening to Rev. Wright and getting brainwashed for over twenty (20) years, thus thinking 'he's the best of the lot!'
Voting Laws should be changed! "Discrimination against Taxpayers" is letting folks that don't work, live off welfare, and social programs, including school loans and grants (that's never paid back) VOTE so they can finish Bankrupting America. This is what Obama is calling "Our Future-Our New Generation"! Well, I hate to burst his bubble, but at the rate him and the Tax & Spend politicians are headed, unless their is a hidden money tree somewhere that Taxpayers are unaware of, America has backed up the past fifty (50) years and is, most definitely, not moving ahead.
Folks, this is a very serious issue!
This is an important statement. Hungry people worldwide need to be informed of the connection between elitist environmental extremism in the developed countries, and the real-world calamity resulting from central-planning. You would think we would have learned from the famines caused by Stalin and by Mao a half-century ago. The Global Warming Hoax, and environmental fascism generally, have an Inconvenient Truth at their base: massive reductions in global population are the only way to achieve the pristine environment required by the environmental movement..
Comment: #2
Posted by: doctorfixit
Sat Apr 26, 2008 4:33 AM
Thanks to Mona's columns and Dr. fixit's pointing out what I've been writing about for years! IT'S TIME FOR 'FAIR TAX' to stop the 'Tax and Spend' run-a-way politicians! This way Taxpayers won't be "Discriminated Against!"
It's time to cut all social, welfare, section 8, grants and non-profit organizations!
Taxpayers, of all races, are being used like rags on a dirty floor. Question for everyone using Taxpayers' money to you, your staff, friends, church, and Pastors teach the young kids about moral responsibilities, respect,
and the ABC's of human anatomy. It's obvious you're not teaching them anything other than "Taxpayers owes us, so breed, breed, and breed! It's time to get off your duffs, take responsibility for yourselves, and let Taxpayers know you're "free at last, right?"
QUESTION: HOW CAN YOU 'BE FREE' IF YOU CONTINUE TO TAKE TAXPAYERS MONEY?
“Get Tested and help stop Aids” article by a Family Home Health Care Owner, that,
Taxpayers are positive these kind of 'takers' get plenty of their money, makes statements and I quote “Along with the struggle for equality, African Americans are locked into a battle to provide healthy, disease-free for
themselves and their children” makes me wonder why they think Taxpayers are responsible for all
their illegitimates, having more illegitimates, sleeping with who knows, possibly blood kin, and no one
seems to bother with this aspect of the real problems. Did it ever occur to you, who pretend to have the
best interest of the community at heart, that you're the problem and you're not solving anything by
continuing to have illegitimates, at an alarming rate, but you seem to be OK with this!
When statements made by Politicians like “Blacks need more role models!” Well, America needs role
models, of all races, and it's not Hollywood or American Idol passing them out! Apparently, the women
are too busy in the back bedroom to be teaching girls (and boys) that having sex, before marriage, could
create the problems and diseases plaguing America! Illegitimates having more illegitimate, creating
more welfare, social programs and non-profit organizations aren't the answer. For decades,
illegitimates have been put into society with no home training, values, morals, discipline, and no regard
for human life.
Welfare and Social Programs aren't working! Instead these 'handouts' are only helping young girls with illegitimate babies to help 'create more illegitimates' and more terror on American soil!
Politicians "you're not solving the problem - you are the problem!"
I quote an article by Leonard Pitts - “Little has changed 10 years after Million Man March! More than
65% of our children are born out of wedlock! I know what's needed to fix our communities requires
no white person's consent! Don't make children you can't support, support means money and his list
goes on!”
The real causes of rising prices and food shortages are very complicated. In the case of rice, for instance, they include crop failures in a number of producing countries,from a number of causes; including flooding in some countries and drought in others, as well as rice pests and diseases. In some contries less area has been planted, but not just because of ethanol production--other industries and urban growth also take land that was once used for agriculture. In addition, there are now more people on the planet than ever before, all needing to eat. And the middle class is growing in China and India and those folks are now eating better than they once did. It is all about supply and demand.
I did some research on this topic last Monday - you can links to my sources here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harvests_thoughts/message/197
