Dennis Avery
April 16, 2008
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2670
A global food crisis looms, as crops are diverted to biofuels. Food
prices have soared 83 percent in three years. Thousands of U.S. farmers
are pulling their land out of the government's biggest conservation
program to plant millions of acres back to crops and pasture. U.S.
environmentalists warn that "years of conservation progress" will be
lost as America's 35-million-acre Conservation Reserve dwindles,
especially in the im****tant bird-nesting areas of the northern Great
Plains.
Global grain shortages are spreading. The World Food Program says it
must abandon some of the drought-stricken hungry. U.S. hog farmers are
quietly asking their veterinarians how to euthanize their baby pigs,
corn prices have risen so high they'd bankrupt their families trying to
feed the pigs to market weight.
Europe is buying Asian palm oil from what used to be tropical forests,
to make biodiesel instead of cooking oil. Orangutans, man's closest DNA
relative, are being captured and killed by the thousands as they're
attracted by the palm seedlings. EU biodiesel mandates exacerbate the
world's cropland scarcity, setting the stage for still-higher grain
prices and more hunger next year.
Asian countries are banning rice ex****ts to make sure they can supply
rice to their own consumers. Too much land in Asia has been growing
increasingly valuable corn and tapioca for feed, instead of rice for
food, because rich-country biofuel mandates raised feed prices
worldwide. But, increased population and affluence continue to demand
more rice.
Meanwhile, soil carbon lost from the replanted Midwest acres and the
cleared tropical forests gases into the air, worsening global warming
risks even as governments vainly promise to cut greenhouse emissions.
And gas prices continue to rise
All of this because of the rush to biofuels-the first, big, panicked
mistake of the global warming scare. The public was sold on the now
obviously foolish idea that it's better to burn food in our fuel tanks
than to feed people and raise livestock from the world's scarce
cropland.
Economists began predicting these awful consequences two years ago when
President Bush first announced his federal biofuels mandate. We already
needed to double crop yields by 2050-to prevent the plow down of the
world's remaining wildlands while we supplied food and feed for the last
global surge of world population growth, fast-rising affluence, and
expanding pet numbers.
U.S. corn nets only about 50 gallons worth of gasoline per acre per
year, and Americans burn more than 134 billion gallons of gasoline per
year. We were already using virtually all of the country's cropland to
produce food and food. Biodiesel is no more productive. The massive land
requirements of biofuels made this disaster inevitable-but few thought
the disaster would arrive so fast.
Over the past two years, corn has soared from $1.86 per bushel to more
than $6, and the U.S. spring planting intentions confirm there won't be
enough grain-for people or pigs-again this year. If we refuse to burn
coal, drill for oil, or build nuclear power plants, this is what we must
expect: hunger, deprivation, and destruction of the planet's natural
resources.
The earth's global warming since 1940 totals only 0.2 degree C. We've
had no warming at all for the past 10 years and temperatures dropped in
2007-while CO2 in the atmosphere continued to rise.
Must we sacrifice the wildlife even before we find out if CO2 really
controls the climate? As President Bush finally caves in to the global
warming alarmists, the answer is evidently "yes."
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
".it should not be surprising to see hordes of former Reds, or of those
who otherwise would have become Reds, turning from Marxism and becoming
the Greens of the ecology movement. It is the same fundamental
philosophy in a different guise, ready as ever to wage war on the
freedom and well-being of the individual." Dr. George Reisman's book
Capitalism
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