Ethanol and Biofuels? Utter and complete madness.
Posted on 04/13/2008 3:43:57 PM PDT by bjs1779
Dubai: The food price and supply situation is turning worse, and in some places is uglier than expected and could lead to domestic turmoil, including the "risk of war", a top official said.
The food price situation has already claimed its first victim - the Haitian Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis - who was forced to quit, and food ration lines in Bangladesh are becoming longer everyday with sporadic incidents, reflecting a near explosive situation due to hunger.
"Food prices, if they go on like they are doing today... the consequences will be terrible," International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominque Strauss-Kahn at a press conference ahead of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington.
Possible impact
Gulf News has been highlighting the global food price crisis and its possible impact on the Gulf countries. "Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving... [eading] to disruption of the economic environment," Strauss-Kahn told a news conference.
Development gains made in the past five or 10 years could be "totally destroyed," he said, warning that social unrest could even lead to war.
"As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war," he said. If the world wanted to avoid "these terrible consequences," then rising prices had to be tackled.
Skyrocketing prices on rice, wheat, corn and other staple foods like milk particularly hurt developing nations, where the bulk of income is spent on the bare necessities for survival.
Rising food prices have also encouraged the UAE government to intervene, when the Ministry of Economy allowed the retail chains to directly import food items by cutting the middlemen to keep prices of essentials at a decent level.
As a result, Union Cooperative Society and Emke Group have already signed a deal with the UAE Ministry of Economy to supply essential food items at 2007 base prices to help the consumers.
Oh goody! Then we can refer to them as “GORE WARS!”
Of course not. We’re only at “domestic turmoil” level so far. ;)
Rising food prices have also encouraged the UAE government to intervene, when the Ministry of Economy allowed the retail chains to directly import food items by cutting the middlemen to keep prices of essentials at a decent level.
As a result, Union Cooperative Society and Emke Group have already signed a deal with the UAE Ministry of Economy to supply essential food items at 2007 base prices to help the consumers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What the heck?!
Surely the citizens of the UAE are not poverty stricken and going hungry?
“And no one’s gettin’ fat ‘cept Mama Cass.....”
When? Where?
“Cry me a river. Pay up, world, or cut oil prices back to $30 a barrel. If you’d rather, you can pay $100 a bushel for any kind of grain. Yes that’s what I said, $100 a bushel, not $3, not $10. Why should oil be the only cartel on earth? “
BRAVO!!!
The Bush legacy gets another notch on the ol’ belt.
Hear Hear! Lets see the world run without American grain.
Ethanol and Biofuels? Utter and complete madness.
As usual, your comment is off base. Most of the people in the affected countries have nothing to do with oil.
A couple of them are already here. : )
"From the Space Weather Prediction Center
Updated 2008 Apr 13 2203 UTC
Joint USAF/NOAA Report of Solar and Geophysical Activity SDF Number 104 Issued at 2200Z on 13 Apr 2008
Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 12/2100Z to 13/2100Z: Solar activity was very low.... Solar activity remains low and things should remain quiet. The solar flux remains in the 60's[EA].
Solar Flux Definition
The 10.7 cm (2800 MHz) radio flux is the amount of solar noise (light) that is emitted by the sun at 10.7 cm wavelengths....
The solar flux is used as a basic indicator of solar activity. It can vary from values below 50 to values in excess of 300 (representing very low solar activity and high to very high solar activity respectively). Values in excess of 200 occur typical during the peak of the solar cycles.
Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low.
Source: http://www.solarcycle24.com.
In the next 5 years or so when the global warming scare is finally understood by all to be the hoax it is; will Al Gore be brought up on some kind of charges for fomenting the deaths of millions?
You better watch your mouth, we are exporting it with no regards to your well being.
Right on.
The one thing that could make the situation worse is a government-mandated price freeze - then you will REALLY see people starve. Unfortunately, it is the first solution that the bureaucrats always think of.
My fellow Americans - dig deep into your wallets and give until it hurts. We need to get food to those poor folks in Dubai, ASAP!
Right, its the U.S.'s fault that the Gulf countries such as Haiti are starving............Give me a break, if the Saudi's gave a rip about their brother countries, with their money they could put lobster and steaks on the tables of all their oil allies..........
This is nothing more than a propaganda piece.........
If the goverment corruption were cleaned out of these third world hell holes there’d be plenty of opportunity for all to prosper.
Maybe the “Nature Nazi” will have the same sense of decency that the biggest Nazi of all time had and self-terminate with extreme prejudice!!!
And having exported our wealth in the name of "free trade", we're now paying more for food products at home as the Chicoms and Indians use our dollars to bid against us...To hell with this one world bullsh!t, I want the next president to remember that he's elected to take care of this country first.
yeah we’re at the bottom of the solar cycle... happens every 11 years or so...
Let ‘em eat SAND!!!
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve read in a long time.
You mean like Rachel Carson, or Margret Sanger? Sorry, but we'll have the left defending them for generations, the poor won't get as much as an "oops."
Haiti is not a gulf country. I forgive the public school students here.
“..will Al Gore be brought up on some kind of charges for fomenting the deaths of millions?”
No way, by that time he’ll have a global cooling scam going with another Nobel prize waiting for him. It’s not Algore who should be blamed for this lie, but those that promote it further. He is merely a small cog in the big wheel of deception.
Understand that there are so-called “cooler heads” in government who have joined promoting the global lie for political expediency. Isn’t one living in the WH right now and aren’t all three candidates for POTUS of the same opinion?
Why, you unabashed chauvenist!!!
Ummm .... Haiti is in the Caribbean.
For the record, did you want to starve Terri Schiavo? I seem to recall you were one of them.
Nothing to do with oil correct. Just American grain.
“As we know, learning from the past, those kind of questions sometimes end in war,” he said.
When? Where?
********************************************************
The French Revolution for one.
“These (other) problems were all compounded by a great scarcity of food in the 1780s. A series of crop failures caused a shortage of grain, consequently raising the price of bread. Because bread was the main source of nutrition for poor peasants, this led to starvation. The two years previous to the revolution (1788-89) saw bad harvests and harsh winters, possibly because of a strong El Niño cycle[11] caused by the 1783 Laki eruption at Iceland[12]. The little ice age was also affecting agriculture: many other areas of Europe had adopted the potato as the staple crop by this time, whereas the French generally refused it as a dirty food or the devil’s food. The potato was more resilient to the colder temperatures during the little ice age and also could not be easily destroyed by scorched earth warfare[13]. A normal worker earned anywhere from 15 to 30 sous a day while skilled workers received 30 to 40 sous. A family of four would need about 2 loaves of bread a day to survive. The price of bread rose by 88 percent in 1789, going from 9 sous to 14.5/15 sous[citation needed]. Many peasants were relying on charity to survive. The peasantry became a class with the ambition to counteract social inequity and put an end to food shortages. The ‘bread riot’ evolved into a central cause of the French Revolution.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_French_Revolution
I’m curious to see what, if any, are the US food exports to these countries that are having ‘issues’. If we aren’t regular trading partners with them, then our own biofuel uses for corn, etc, have nothing to do with their struggles
(altho, an excess of our own product would be welcomed in the starving nations).
So, I’m not jumping to conclusions. If/when it’s found out that we are burning what we used to ship, I’ll scream louder than anyone. But I don’t know enough about our trading partners to immediately blame Bush, Gore, etc.
If anyone has this kind of info...
Seriously, aren't there lots of farmers in third-world countries? While 2% of Americans are farmers, well over 50% of the population of many countries are poor. This should be a boon to them.
Only in leftie land is it bad to have the price of the only thing you produce go through the roof.
Terri Schiavo’s death was a total clusterfark of family law and created a political movement that has canonized her. I don’t share that political concern and don’t give a rat’s ass about your feelings on the subject, other than to say your post was moral speculation and stupid as hell in context to the thread topic.
Keep it on the Terri’s Dailies threads and I won’t comment about it.
Seriously, aren't there lots of farmers in third-world countries? While 2% of Americans are farmers, well over 50% of the population of many countries are farmers. This should be a boon to them.
Only in leftie land is it bad to have the price of the only thing you produce go through the roof.
I’m afraid that the food shortage is going to get very bad and very expensive for the rest of us. The greenies are going to get exactly what they wanted, a cleaner world with less people they just didn’t want to tell anyone a head of time what the plan was. Unfortuantely there will be no one sending food to save them because all of the wheat fields have been planted with corn and that is for animal feed and bio fuels. From what I’ve been reading the price of wheat and rice is about to get very expensive. I just dropped 25# of flour into the freezer now while it is still affordable.
We have food, they have oil. Hmmm... how about an exchange? We can call it Oil for Food II
It drives up prices that they can't afford. There are rumblings in this country about food prices, but not life or death, yet. For the mayority that is. I am sure some are really going to hurt though.
Using food for biofuel is one thing..but we kinda need to have food for animals to eat, since we eat the animals. It’s food for food.
Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it.
The flux is up to 69.
It’s the start of a new solar cycle, I hope.
In other words, you still wanted to starve her to death. Thanks for your response.
When it promises to sell for as much as corn, farmers will plant more of it. We'll end up with all food prices being higher and subsidized ethanol which, counting production, produces more emissions than gasoline and delivers less energy. Oh yes, there's the issue of ethanol production utilizing scarce water resources.
If Gore were a Republican the MSM would be all over him on this.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.