Now Who Could Have Seen THAT Coming?
Well, me actually. (Pause while I shine my MENSA badge.)
"Americans face sizable increases in their grocery bills this year as a boom in ethanol production diverts more corn from the nation's dinner table to its gas tank. Indeed, their pocketbooks could feel the pinch for years to come." The Wall Street Journal
See, here's the thing. If you take FOOD, and turn it into GAS, you are, by definition, reducing the amount of FOOD available. Because of the laws of supply and demand, prices go up.
When they first started talking about ethanol, I remember saying to several people that it was not a good idea to mess with our food supply to provide gas. And corn isn't just a food - it's THE food. It's in everything! (Well, as high fructose corn syrup it is, anyway. Plus we feed it to animals we eat.)
This whole thing is giving me a headache. Here's how my brain train is running:
1. We want to stop buying gas because the arabs are meanie-bobeanies and everybody's complaining about the high cost of gas. (not that I blame them.)
2. We look for an alternate source of energy.
3. We settle on a food crop, thus driving the cost of food way up on top of the cost of gas still being up. (And, BTW, the Wall Street Journal is estimating that food prices will go higher than they are now, and stay up for TEN YEARS.)
4. We get into a situation where people have to gas up their cars to get to work, but cannot afford to pay their bills, buy gas AND feed their families.
5. All of this causes a recession, or, God forbid, a depression.
6. Not only that, but (can I just remind you) that a food crop is vulnerable to weather patterns. Just ask the citrus farmers in Florida. So, when there's a bad year, a drought or whatever, and we are dependent on corn for fuel, what do we do then? We aren't addressing the basic problem - reliance on fuel.
You know, it's really sad that the only econ class I ever took was in high school (and I remember being really confused, largely because the teacher was a sweet old man who should have retired 10 years earlier) and I get this, why don't the people in charge? Why don't people have the sense God gave a squirrel?
Oh, and, in case you love irony, get this:
We used to use sugar in all the places where high fructose corn syrup gets used, right? Remember that? OK. Lots of that sugar was grown in the Philippines, which was an American protectorate. Well, when corporations realized they could use HCFS for way cheaper than sugar, lots of those sugar plantations shut down. Those areas of the Philippines have become hotbeds of Radical Islamists, because when a man doesn't work, he has all kinds of time to get indoctrinated and stuff.
Anyway, here are a couple of links:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117667991954270669-Oglbl5YepJfTYwDNgEWSt54OTB8_20070423.html?mod=regionallinks
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/29/news/economy/beef_prices/index.htm
"Americans face sizable increases in their grocery bills this year as a boom in ethanol production diverts more corn from the nation's dinner table to its gas tank. Indeed, their pocketbooks could feel the pinch for years to come." The Wall Street Journal
See, here's the thing. If you take FOOD, and turn it into GAS, you are, by definition, reducing the amount of FOOD available. Because of the laws of supply and demand, prices go up.
When they first started talking about ethanol, I remember saying to several people that it was not a good idea to mess with our food supply to provide gas. And corn isn't just a food - it's THE food. It's in everything! (Well, as high fructose corn syrup it is, anyway. Plus we feed it to animals we eat.)
This whole thing is giving me a headache. Here's how my brain train is running:
1. We want to stop buying gas because the arabs are meanie-bobeanies and everybody's complaining about the high cost of gas. (not that I blame them.)
2. We look for an alternate source of energy.
3. We settle on a food crop, thus driving the cost of food way up on top of the cost of gas still being up. (And, BTW, the Wall Street Journal is estimating that food prices will go higher than they are now, and stay up for TEN YEARS.)
4. We get into a situation where people have to gas up their cars to get to work, but cannot afford to pay their bills, buy gas AND feed their families.
5. All of this causes a recession, or, God forbid, a depression.
6. Not only that, but (can I just remind you) that a food crop is vulnerable to weather patterns. Just ask the citrus farmers in Florida. So, when there's a bad year, a drought or whatever, and we are dependent on corn for fuel, what do we do then? We aren't addressing the basic problem - reliance on fuel.
You know, it's really sad that the only econ class I ever took was in high school (and I remember being really confused, largely because the teacher was a sweet old man who should have retired 10 years earlier) and I get this, why don't the people in charge? Why don't people have the sense God gave a squirrel?
Oh, and, in case you love irony, get this:
We used to use sugar in all the places where high fructose corn syrup gets used, right? Remember that? OK. Lots of that sugar was grown in the Philippines, which was an American protectorate. Well, when corporations realized they could use HCFS for way cheaper than sugar, lots of those sugar plantations shut down. Those areas of the Philippines have become hotbeds of Radical Islamists, because when a man doesn't work, he has all kinds of time to get indoctrinated and stuff.
Anyway, here are a couple of links:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117667991954270669-Oglbl5YepJfTYwDNgEWSt54OTB8_20070423.html?mod=regionallinks
http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/29/news/economy/beef_prices/index.htm
Labels: food, global warming, GRRRR, Idiot Alert
posted by The Big Seester | 12:56 PM
2 Comments:
There's more to the increase in food prices than simply the lower supply of corn due to ethanol production (though I also agree with the article on that point, as well). Gas costs more, too, and since transporting your food to the grocery store requires gas, that results in higher food prices.
We need to get into alternative sources of ethanol that don't involve food stocks. For example, cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, which is a crop that grows almost anywhere and requires little to no cultivation, could (and should) replace corn as the source of ethanol for automotive fuels.
WSJ should be ashamed that it didn't consider all the aspects of the increased-food-price story.
On a totally unrelated note, I tagged TBS for a meme.
Not that alternative fuels aren't all very interesting and important and so forth. ;-)
Post a Comment
<< Home