Posted on 04/11/2008 9:51:22 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
Energy: The world's poor are learning what happens when government subsidizes the burning of food. It's time to end this madness and let the market decide if any biofuels make sense.
For most Americans, the rising prices at the supermarket are definitely an annoyance, but hardly a threat to life and health. It's a different story in countries like Haiti, where food inflation has led to real hunger and, last week, to riots.
News reports say the poorest Haitians are trying to get by on cookies made with dirt, vegetable oil and salt. Food riots also have roiled Egypt and led to a general strike in Burkina Faso in West Africa. The high cost of corn, wheat, soybeans and other basics of the world's diet could soon start bringing down governments.
It already has set back the fight to reduce global poverty. World Bank Chairman Robert Zoellick estimates that "the effect of this food crisis on poverty reduction worldwide is on the order of seven lost years."
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Every time I see video of these huge crowds protesting something in the Mideast, Africa, or wherever I can’t help but wonder “Don’t these people have jobs?”
You know, stuff like plowing fields. Building aqueducts. Processing flour.
That sort of thing.
One wonders.....
Seems to me the facts are this:
The worldwide explosion (if you chose to call it that) in population has basically been fed by the vast production of grains and foodstuffs from countries in the temperate climate zones.
When you see some place in the middle of Deserttown, Syria or something and there are only a few million people living there, you can’t help but wonder if it would ever be possible for the natural local ecosystem to support them all.
Hey, I’d eat a scorpion too if it meant the difference between life and death.
But just seems to me some things are out of whack.
Sorta like all the Code Pink fruit cakes.
Considering that every other day is a religious holy day (holiday), one need not wonder to far. ;-)
Interesting way to look at it. Lets burn food in our car so we can go to work to afford to buy....food!
the globalists call burning food “population control”.
I’m gonna start a walkathon.
You get to wear a purple ribbon. All donations go towards paying the wages of people who need to take off work so they don’t miss their naps.
Me, especially!!
Your rantings and speculation about a future of starvation, and the resulting hysteria you have helped unleash, is contributing substantially to real life, here and now starvation.
The worst part for you is that the place you will hold as one of the most destructive and misguided buffoons in the history of this not-so-hot planet, isn't even close to your biggest problem. That being what a complete and utter dork you are.
The late comedian Sam Kinnesin used to say:
“we keep sending food to people on the desert, every year, the desert is sand, nothing grows there, it’s sand , thee’s no water, but we keep sending food there. Hey people in the desert... move! Move to where the food is .........you are living in a ....desert.”
I am parraphrasing but it still makes sense.
And, since it also diminishes the popcorn supply, what do we munch on while betaking this spectacle?
“Lets burn food in our car so we can go to work to afford to buy....food!”
That’s great. It would be a grerat tagline.
Well, I don’t consider myself to be an envirowhacko.
But whether you are a socialist fanatic like Gore, or an arch conservative, we need to admit one thing.
Earth can only support some number (we don’t know that number yet) of people.
Even if we could grow an unlimited supply of food, soon we would be up to our eyeballs in chit, and that’s not a very exciting proposition.
We’ve been lucky (and intelligent) so far. And I hate social engineering as much as the next guy. But we are getting to the point that we HAVE to answer some serious questions about the future.
And they are hard questions.
Exhale, please.
The population of the planet is unlikely to ever break 10 billion. The planet could support that easily.
If things continue like it looks they might, they may be pushed into a corner and asked "So then, you think scarce food and starvation are good side effect of the policies you've imposed, because we can slow global warming by killing people?"
It isn't just the warmies that are responsible here though. Farming and ethanol related interests that have pushed for and profited from the belief that subsidizing the burning of food in a hungry world was a good idea are to blame as well.
And what, in your opinion, would those questions be?
I disagree that it is unlikely.
Years ago, before my wife passed, she saw a couple of somewhat feral kittens hanging out.
“They’re so cute!”, she would say, and I know she meant well, she would put out food for them.
About three years later I was fishing some decomposing dead kittens out of a spot near my house. There were feral cats EVERYWHERE. I had to buy a live trap because they were basically tearing things apart at their leisure.
You chose to avoid the question by stating (without any evidence) that the world will never get to ten billion.
My point it that we figure out what to do NOW, because if it gets to the point of no return, it effects us all.
Mathematically, we can expect one of two things. A smooth, linear approach to the point of equilibrium, or going well beyond that, and having a cataclysmic decline.
I exhale plenty. And I understand alot of things. I am offended that you think my post was hysterical.
If that is the case who do we kill off to manage that number? Your answer will tell much about you.
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