Bio-Fuel and Global Hunger

Bob Marshall is not the only official that recognizes the increase of food prices is directly related to the mandate for bio-fuel. The UN of all places has been reported in the British news service the Telegraph that it will lead to world hunger.

"The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted.

This of course is in contrast to their programs that support bio-fuel as the answer to global warming.

Likewise, combustion of fossil fuels can lead to outdoor air pollution, acidification of land and water and emissions of greenhouse gases. In all these cases, the environmental damage and its harmful effects can be reduced by increasing energy efficiency, introducing modern technologies for energy production and use, substituting cleaner fuels for polluting fuels, and introducing renewable energy.
814 World Health
Organization. 2002.
The World Health Report
2002. Geneva.

Is it any wonder that people are skeptical of the whole global warming nonsense? While Our political leaders are all stumping for ethanol while standing in the way of oil field production and refining capacity the rest of us have to suffer the unintended consequences of their ignorance.

The New York Times of all places has an article that reveals how some politicians are waking up to the problem yet lack the backbone to do anything about it.

Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he had come to realize that Congress made a mistake in backing biofuels, not anticipating the impact on food costs. He said Congress needed to reconsider its policy, though he acknowledged that would be difficult.

"If there was a secret vote, there is a pretty large number of people who would like to reassess what we are doing," he said.

Nit wits such as Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and Ron Litterer, President of the National Corn Growers Association pass off the complaints as scapegoating despite the fact that farmers have decreased the acreage of other crops to plant additional corn acreage to take advantage of the dramatic upward move in the price for corn because of the new demand. Unlike oil, bio-fuel is subject to the real possibility of wide spread crop failure from drought and flooding.

The government has conducted the war on poverty only to see generations of families trapped in the welfare rolls. It instituted public education and millions of parents have to put their children in homeschool or privet school to ensure they get a real education. It punishes companies that move jobs overseas while letting tens of millions of foreigners to work here illegally. Now they are promising energy independence by driving the cost of everything including fuel to levels never seen before. Bob Marshall is not the only one who knows that bio-fuel is doing more harm than good but he seems to be one of the only one who holds public office that can see the damage that politics is causing the citizens.







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