While hyper-environmentalists jump for joy over the push for more ethanol, the added gas means less fuel for people who depend on grain for life more than cruising around town. Grain prices continue to top the charts while stockpiles are whittled down to nothing. Throw in a tsunami and a drought and you have recipe for starvation.
In the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Haiti, and other countries, riots and unrest over the issue consume the news. And most countries are clamping down on grain exports to keep everything at home. Most Americans don't realize that the U.S. is the rice capital of the world. But even here in the country Japanese refer to as Rice Country, flooding in the Southern states have wiped out rice crops for the year. As a shortage of corn pushes people to other grains, the shortages there become much more evident.
I'm not trying to clang the alarm bell for another Y2k panic, but it will be interesting to watch how the politicians juggle this political hot potato trying to decide which is more important: green gas or food.
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3 comments:
??? True environmenalists do not support growing corn to make ethanol--for the reason you indicate plus the environmental problems from the fossil fuel fertilizer and other inputs that hurt the environment! Also, I've read some articles in the past that question whether growing corn for ethanol is energetically sound.
It is not.
There are people starving in this world so using a food source as a fuel is sinful. Come on, lets put that American ingenuity to work and come up with an alternative fuel, clean energy mass transit and a willingness to compromise our life styles for the good of our future.
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