Energy-Saving Mendacity
Exactly how stupid can governments be? Well, try this one on for size: determining that food supplies come second to energy needs. Without food people cannot exist, simple as that. Without adequate nourishment the argument for the necessity to exploit food products as awkward sources of energy relegates countless impoverished populations to tertiary consideration as entitled human beings.The entire question of the morality of side-lining foodgrains for ethanol production is beyond impractical and has gone into the realm of government-mandated starvation for the world's unprivileged.
It's become an economic issue within Western countries, where farmers who formerly depended on government subsidies just to get by, and who decried the subsistence economy of most farms, now celebrate newfound wealth through the sturdy government support of food-as-fuel.
What's more, this is being done as a responsible step toward solving some of the problems of environmental degradation and atmospheric pollution.
Yet forests peat bogs and wetlands acting as carbon sinks are now being converted to arable fields to grow food cereal crops meant for ethanol production. It's legal and encouraged, because Western governments have mandated fuel percentages of ethanol.
Biofuels have become the latest weapon against a booming world population increase. Through the deliberate and officially decreed bypassing of cereal crops for food distribution we are condemning people in Asia, Africa and elsewhere to slow death by starvation. Riots in India and Haiti, in Mexico, Egypt and Cameroon speak of peoples' desperation.
Corn producers, realizing higher profit than ever for their once too-abundant crops are pouring on the fertilizers and in so doing stressing an already over-stressed environment. Deforestation in the zeal to produce enough crops to meet biofuel demand, is handily outstripping any potential benefit from lower carbon emissions from ethanol.
The shortage of grains, higher cost of available grains, escalating costs of fuel, are all adding to the costs related to raising and finishing livestock and poultry. Impacting as well on the pricing of dairy products, and a complicated array of finished food products using corn byproducts.
We have a problem - we have a number of very large problems - but utilizing foodgrains for fuel production is amazingly short-sighted, incredibly stupid - and criminal in the final analysis. It is a primitive solution to a complex problem that we have ourselves engineered.
Labels: Environment, Political Realities, Societal Failures, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 13, 2008
<< Home