Will the left accept their responsibilty?

Will the left accept their responsibilty for the current food crisis?

http://www.nysun.com/news/food-crisis-eclipsing-climate-change

Dozens of people world wide have been killed in food riots. The situation is getting worse. Al Gore was the leading voice on ethanol. He touted it as the worlds best choice for the World and through it the elimination of the need for oil and it's dependency. And we in the U.S. and the European Union are not blameless either. Not by a long shot. In our search for cleaner energy we jumped aboard the "biofuels" bandwagon. This crisis hyping should be an object lesson. Fighting man made global warming (if there is man made global warming) is a tricky business and can only be undertaken after careful review of the costs and benefits.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.
Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”
“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

Now, new data demonstrates that biofuels cost more energy than they save. When the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol 'pays back' the carbon released by land-use change.( the good news is Mr. Gore believes the world will be dead in a few decades so this point may be moot! )

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone. There's something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush(Yes he too has jumped on the Gore band wagon) say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.


Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have also risen dramatically.

The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.


It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel fraud on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.


The ethanol fraud is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?

Perhaps those on the left should remember that funds spent on reducing global warming are diverted from other worthy efforts like supplying clean drinking water to Africa, fighting malaria, and improving flood control infrastructure. And as we are now seeing on our front pages, there are direct costs like dramatically increasing the price of food and pushing millions of poor people to desperation

The left has always run headlong into "Crisis" situations, real or not, and have created more pain the succor. This is just another example.This is not to suggest that all efforts to conserve energy or maintain the environment are folly. Rather, it's a cautionary tale. How much environmental improvement do we really get and -- this is paramount -- at what price? How many more deaths will be necessary before the left understands that solutions take time and restraint?

I apologize beforehand if my 'tone' is somewhat harsh. But this lies at Gores feet. The King of the left. This is his war. Will he be held responsible as Bush is with the Iraq war? Let the spinning begin!