Okay, here's a political rant for you all. I've been hearing a lot about ethanol in the news lately. Now, I'm all for trying to reduce our dirtying of the earth. It's our home. And yet, I don't think we're in as much trouble as a lot of the environmentalists say we are. I've actually heard some scientists say we're on a global cooling trend. Whatever is going on, I know the earth is strong and will recover.
Ethanol was proposed as an alternative fuel awhile ago. It sounded so wonderful: a renewable source of energy that would decrease emissions and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And yet, that hasn't turned out to be the case. It actually takes the same or more energy to produce, make, and burn ethanol than oil, which means not much improvement on the environment. And there's a worse side effect: food prices.
Food prices have started to steadily increase. More farmers are switching to growing corn because it is a more profitable crop. That makes wheat crops drop, and prices of wheat to rise. Then corn actually costs more because a bigger number of it's crop is going to the production of ethanol. Corn is in almost everything we eat. So food prices increase.
I saw a story on the news yesterday that made me sad. This food price increase isn't just here in the US; it's all over the world. So poorer countries who could barely afford food in the first place are now struggling even more. People have been starving in the world for too long (thanks also, in part, to a lot of US trade policies, which I won't discuss here), so we decide to burn food to save the environment. Instead of sending the extra crops to people who eat maybe once a day, we burn it. Even charities that bring food to poor people in poor countries are having problems. They can't feed as many because prices are just too high. Couldn't we find a more effective way? Couldn't we find something else to burn? I guess it just makes me mad when people decide that saving the planet is much more important than saving the people on it; and when people's lives and livelihoods are less important than carbon footprints, hybrids, and ethanol production. Honestly, we've lost our focus.
2 comments:
Agreed. I support research in biofuels, and would like to see them play a bigger part. But corn is actually one of the least efficient biofuels out there. We only use it because it is "home grown," and you get the agricultural community behind you that way. Interesting enough, research is showing that plain old grass is probably better than corn. It makes me very angry that people are starving, and we are throwing all this money at an inferior source, just because of politics.
Anyways, I enjoyed your political rant!
Or we could just burn that gooey black stuff conveniently buried underground in large quantities and of no use for anything else.
And, ranting is welcome anytime (said the political rant junky).
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