Fuels vs. food

**Shek** · 04-18-2008, 09:46 AM

Quote:

FUELS VS. FOOD
By INDUR M. GOKLANY

April 17, 2008 -- President Bush's call yesterday for a dramatic slowdown of green-house-gas emissions reflects growing concern for the consequences of climate change. But what about the consequences of the world's response?

The fact is, food riots resulting partly from the United States' alternative energy policies have arrived at our front door. Crowds of hungry demonstrators swarmed the presidential palace in Haiti last week to protest skyrocketing food prices.

In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic.

Food riots have erupted in Mexico, Morocco, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mauritania, Cameroon, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. Vietnam, Cambodia, India and Egypt have all placed restrictions on their rice exports to drive down domestic prices. Pakistan has reinstated food rationing, which is also under discussion in Bangladesh and rumored in Sri Lanka.

Supposedly climate-friendly policies in the United States and the European Union - subsidizing the production and consumption of such renewable biofuels as ethanol and biodiesel - have diverted such crops as corn, soybeans and palm oil from food to fuel. This, in turn, has increased prices for food worldwide at a time when the highly populous and newly prosperous East and South Asian countries are demanding more of it.

Together, China and India constitute 40 percent of the world's population. Not long ago, these countries were on the brink of starvation, but now they're seeing food demand rise ever higher because of years of near double-digit economic growth rates. Energy - critical for making fertilizers, transporting food and running equipment - is at record prices.

According to World Bank data, by March of this year, grain prices had tripled, fertilizer prices had quintupled and energy prices were up 21/2-fold since 2000. Since January of this year alone, food prices have increased a staggering 65 percent.

These food-price spikes threaten to undo one of the world's signal post-World War II achievements. In the '50s and '60s, many feared that famine was inevitable. Instead, we witnessed a vast reduction in chronic hunger, from 37 percent of the developing world's population in 1970 to 17 percent in 2001 - despite an 83 percent increase in population.

Increased agricultural productivity, trade in food commodities and aid from the developed world resulted in a 75 percent drop in global food prices after 1950, making food available to the bottom-rung billions worldwide. The current bump-up in food prices threatens to reverse these gains.

The conversion of natural habitat land for produce-cultivation purposes had been the single-largest threat to biodiversity worldwide, but over the last half century, the global agricultural footprint has nearly stabilized. Now, this achievement is also in jeopardy.

What the US ethanol subsidies do for corn, the European Union's biodiesel subsidies do for palm oil. EU policies stoke an artificial demand for biodiesel, leading to the clearance of high-biodiversity forests in Malaysia and Indonesia. In both the European Union and the United States, lands previously set aside for nature conservation are once again coming under the plow to meet subsidized biofuel demand.

Agricultural expansion, in turn, increases pressures on certain animal species and leads to higher releases of carbon, from biomass and soil above and below ground. Fertilizers used to increase agricultural yields also increase nitrogen discharged into waters and emissions of nitrous oxide - a greenhouse gas that heats the atmosphere 300 times more effectively than carbon dioxide.

Thus, even if biofuels produce an energy surplus, they would not necessarily be environmentally sound. Worse, they harm the US economy. Higher energy and food prices reduce consumers' disposable income more or less equally, meaning they disproportionately affect poorer people. Higher food prices, alternative energy subsidies and greenhouse-gas-emissions controls only make it harder for these people to earn a living or afford better education and health care.

Climate-change remedies can lead to greater poverty, starvation and disease, as well as widespread ecological destruction - some of the very misfortunes that they're supposed to prevent. In our haste to address global warming, we have yet to think seriously about our policies' unintended effects.

The results have been disastrous, and they're only getting more so.

Indur M. Goklany wrote "The Improving State of the World" (Cato Institute).

troung · 04-18-2008, 14:45 PM

Ethanol is one of the biggest scams of this century thus far...

**Shek** · 04-18-2008, 15:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troung

Ethanol is one of the biggest scams of this century thus far...

Troung,
You look different? Did you get your hair styled?

**Ironduke** · 04-18-2008, 15:27 PM

Biofuels... the worst idea ever.

The amount of corn needed to fill the tank on a mid-size vehicle with E85 would feed a man for six months.

1/3 of US corn production is used for ethanol production for fuel. Yet Congress passed a law calling for five times more ethanol.

I read somewhere that if the US were to completely switch over from gasoline to ethanol, we would have to plant 75% of the world's surface with corn, to supply our energy needs alone.

troung · 04-18-2008, 15:38 PM

Quote:

Troung,
You look different? Did you get your hair styled?

And contacts... have to look good for WAB...

**Parihaka** · 04-18-2008, 17:55 PM

Law of unintended consequences Shek?

gunnut · 04-18-2008, 18:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troung

Ethanol is one of the biggest scams of this century thus far...

Even bigger than income tax withholdings?

troung · 04-18-2008, 18:48 PM

Quote:

Even bigger than income tax withholdings?

Income tax withholdings (who the freak knows what that is without googling it or being some sort of Paulite - you know more about those things than a good christian should) isn't going to cause people to starve to death, I think.

gunnut · 04-18-2008, 18:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troung

Income tax withholdings (who the freak knows what that is without googling it or being some sort of Paulite - you know more about those things than a good christian should) isn't going to cause people to starve to death, I think.

But it sure gets the job done (getting people not to complain about the government extortion and actually happy when the government returns borrowed money).

All I have to say about ethanol is blame it on the environmentalists, especially global warming cultists.

By the way, I finally figured out how to calculate withholdings and how to translate personal allowance number into dollar figures. I hate our tax structure.

This cartoon is more appropriate here than the other thread.

troung · 04-18-2008, 19:06 PM

Quote:

But it sure gets the job done (getting people not to complain about the government extortion and actually happy when the government returns borrowed money).

No the government is giving me money

Quote:

All I have to say about ethanol is blame it on the environmentalists, especially global warming cultists.

I agree on that.

Quote:

I hate our tax structure.

It creates jobs.

gunnut · 04-18-2008, 19:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troung

It creates jobs.

So does graffiti.

dalem · 04-18-2008, 19:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shek

Troung,
You look different? Did you get your hair styled?

He looks a bit like Markie Post. Yowsa!

-dale

troung · 04-18-2008, 19:30 PM

Quote:

He looks a bit like Markie Post. Yowsa!

-dale

You would never make a possibly negative comment (Markie Post is like 60) about Goo-Goosha (who is in her 30s unless she says otherwise) to her face - if you wanted to live.

Quote:

So does graffiti.

Not ones people go to college for. A border jumper can clean graffiti.

7thsfsniper · 04-18-2008, 20:50 PM

Troung-looking good as always.

Ok........I mean WTF! I am not a political analyst, professor of anything, nor do I claim to have ALL the answers. But if a group of people, and I know we cannot be the only ones, can see whats going on here, then what the hell is it going to take to wake all these sleepers up. This is like a 10,000ft tall flashing neon sign to me. I know when arguing the points of unions good or bad, Ford vs Chevy, what is the better gun....etc. People do not always agree. But for crying out loud, we are standing on the edge of a global crisis the likes of which have yet to be accurately imagined.

Global warming-Thanks Al Gore-you socialist moron!
Jihad-Well that should keep us on our toes.
Hey, look everybody at all this oil under the lower 48-well, get drillin'!

Eat corn-Burn oil-wow! that was easy. I just can't wait for the day the air is clean everywhere and no one around to breath it! Boy that makes sense.

Good post SHEK. Just another flash of the warning light!

**Shek** · 04-18-2008, 20:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parihaka

Law of unintended consequences Shek?

I don't know. Scientists knew back in 2005 that ethanol wasted more fossil fuel than it created (so much for energy independence). Econ 101 can predict higher prices. I don't know if the full impact that is being felt was predicted, but it certainly isn't a stretch. The farm states did their jobs in getting their Congressmen to go "green", as is more green for their states. I don't think that they thought through it completely or thought beyond the next election cycle.

Archer Midland Daniel (ADM) is one of the major ethanol producers and one of its big plants is in my hometown. It sure stinks . . .

04-18-2008, 14:45 PM	#2 (permalink)
troung A Self Important *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 08-03-03 Posts: 4,236 Country:	Ethanol is one of the biggest scams of this century thus far... __________________ To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

04-18-2008, 15:27 PM	#4 (permalink)
Ironduke Burgomaster Join Date: 08-02-03 Location: Minneapolis Posts: 6,800 Country:	Biofuels... the worst idea ever. The amount of corn needed to fill the tank on a mid-size vehicle with E85 would feed a man for six months. 1/3 of US corn production is used for ethanol production for fuel. Yet Congress passed a law calling for five times more ethanol. I read somewhere that if the US were to completely switch over from gasoline to ethanol, we would have to plant 75% of the world's surface with corn, to supply our energy needs alone. __________________ The Buck Stops Here

04-18-2008, 17:55 PM	#6 (permalink)
Parihaka Moderator Join Date: 11-10-04 Location: Te Ika a Maui Posts: 9,465 Country:	Law of unintended consequences Shek? __________________ In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

04-18-2008, 20:50 PM	#14 (permalink)
7thsfsniper DEVOUT BIKER *Military Professional* Join Date: 02-29-08 Location: Missouri, pron"misery" Posts: 870 Country:	Troung-looking good as always. Ok........I mean WTF! I am not a political analyst, professor of anything, nor do I claim to have ALL the answers. But if a group of people, and I know we cannot be the only ones, can see whats going on here, then what the hell is it going to take to wake all these sleepers up. This is like a 10,000ft tall flashing neon sign to me. I know when arguing the points of unions good or bad, Ford vs Chevy, what is the better gun....etc. People do not always agree. But for crying out loud, we are standing on the edge of a global crisis the likes of which have yet to be accurately imagined. Global warming-Thanks Al Gore-you socialist moron! Jihad-Well that should keep us on our toes. Hey, look everybody at all this oil under the lower 48-well, get drillin'! Eat corn-Burn oil-wow! that was easy. I just can't wait for the day the air is clean everywhere and no one around to breath it! Boy that makes sense. Good post SHEK. Just another flash of the warning light! __________________ *The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten*

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