Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Ethanol, Cars or Food?


Thank you environmental politics for taking food from the table of the poor. Higher fuel prices adds to the cost of food. However an even bigger part of the cost is the hundred of millions of bushels of corn that used to feed people and livestock is now being converted to ethanol. Farmers are switching acreage from soybean, rice and wheat to cash in on the corn frenzy so the price of those crops have risen. The rising food prices have concerned the food industry such that they have sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
We are concerned that the aggressive increase in biofuels mandates contained in the Senate legislation raises fundamental concerns and questions about the impact that an increased federal government mandate for corn-based ethanol will have on the livestock and food industry’s ability to produce competitively available, affordable food.

The availability of affordable food. Curiously absent in many of the reports I've seen is the effect these higher food prices will have on low-income families, especially those with younger children. These are the families that really rely on milk, cereal and corn and wheat products. Are the low-income people going to be sacrificed on the altar of global warming. In a world where people are starving does it make sense to run cars on food?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As a matter of Public Policy, Global Warming Dissension is employed smartly only to reduce the cost of panic.
There is no doubt that the oceans are anomalously warmer around the poles during summers. http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo.html you can view this map and discern that even in the Southern Hemisphere, polar melting is creating anomalous Temperature and Temperature Depth (kelvin waves) profiles... What you see around the poles is the complete opposite of what should be expected. During our summer Polar melting should producing cooler than normal waters and the Southern hemisphere's winter should be sloshing the water around enough to keep it from being colder than normal.
Time Series Analysis dating to 1999 can be researched and does make clear that winter melts are starting earlier, last longer, and thus are altering ocean salitnity levels to the extent that the circulation patterns have weakened by 30% so far. The weakening of the Thermohaline Circulation has shifted control of the climate away from the Oceans and given it to the Atmosphere.
The truth is we developed China, India, and other environmentally unfriendly powers (10% or greater GDP for each of them since 1995) with Internet Banking Revolution profits (rate of exchange grows wealth) before we had the technological know-how to prevent disaster (and this encouragement of multipolarity also weakened our real politick Power before we had implemented....)

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