biofuels fuel starvation
by Steven Doss
Published: April 26, 2008
In Haiti, thousands of people flooded into the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. Why were they doing this? Was it to protest oppressive social policy? Was it to support Tibetan freedom? Was it just “something to do” in one of the poorest countries in the world?
No. It was for rice.
Food prices have risen 43 percent in the past few years, and while this is no big problem for most people in the United States, in the third world, millions are going without food because they just can’t afford it. Why have food prices risen so much? Though there are many factors, one main one has to do with our new found fascination with Al Gore’s favorite cause: The Environment.
You may be saying, “But I thought protecting the environment is a good thing?” Of course it isn’t! Oh, wait, yes it is. In fact, it is one of the best things we can do in order to prevent our world from turning into a scene from Blade Runner. Yet, one of our best ideas for protection has had some bad consequences: biofuel. In order to feel good about themselves, people have decided that the best thing to do is to keep their SUV’s and fill them up with “plant juices.” While this makes our air a tiny bit cleaner (because a majority of pollutants are put in the air by industries), it lowers food production greatly. According to the World Bank, filling up a SUV just once takes the same amount of corn that a person could live off of for a year. A YEAR, PEOPLE!
In theology, we have a thought area called “Christian Realism.” It states that in order to do the most good, sometimes you have to do something bad. We must use this idea in this case. But the question is, which is worse? In the long run, it would be best to protect the environment so that we don’t have to resort to cannibalism (or the “Ted Turner Solution”). As we are patting ourselves on the back for being so “socially aware” and protecting the environment by keeping our “Corn Guzzlers” fueled up, people are dying. What’s sad is that we are so concerned with being “socially aware” that we become “socially blinded” to people who aren’t living in our nice little bubble.
The media does not report on what goes on in places like Haiti because people starving is not “this generation’s problem.” They are right, it isn’t this generation’s problem… IT’S EVERY GENERATION’S PROBLEM! We need to open our eyes and try to find a way that we can help the environment without killing off a few million people. Increase fuel millage in our autos so that we don’t resort to starving people for fuel. Tighter environmental standards on industries to defeat the major emitter of pollutants. Maybe we could pay people to grow corn instead of making it more profitable to the United States. We must realize that our policies, that we think are best for us, are killing people around the world.
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April 29th, 2008 at 3:16 am
It makes no sense for the government to assume that it’s better at picking a replacement for petrol than the market. Bush needs to quit meddling with corn.