3/20/13, "Corn Ethanol Fuels Riots" Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
"Corn ethanol gets just about everything wrong: it increases emissions, it starves the world’s poor, it isn’t efficient, and it drains billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies. As it turns out, it might also be responsible for last year’s violent labor protests in South Africa and food protests in Haiti and Argentina. The story was covered here at The American Interest last October, but on Monday Real Clear Energy gave a nice summary touching on the correlation between food prices and civil unrest:
[T]he authors argue that even autocratic governments can maintain their legitimacy as long as they are able to provide basic necessities. “When the ability of the political system to provide security for the population breaks down, popular support disappears.” [...]As RCE says, it’s important not to conflate correlation with causation. But when food prices rise beyond a certain threshold, protests become more likely. The logic is simple and sound: hungry people are desperate people, as the data bears out.
With regard to South Africa, the authors write: “Worker demands for dramatic pay increases reflect that their wages have not kept up with drastic increases in the prices of necessities, especially food.”
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The ethanol scam is a staple of big banks, a matter of 'national security' to them:
9/5/12, “Bankers: Ethanol at heart of corn, farm pricing structure,” Reuters
“The facts, they say, show that ethanol is now bolted on to the core of three huge industries: energy, meat and banking....“Corn can be a national security issue for this country,” said Curt Covington, senior vice president for agricultural and rural banking at Bank of the West, the second largest commercial lender to U.S. farmers. “That’s where we are right now.”"...
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3/15/13, "Smells Like Progress: Here’s a Biofuel That Doesn’t Stink," Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
"Corn ethanol...starves the world’s poor by raising food prices and has been shown to actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. Yet misguided greens and big agriculture have successfully lobbied to secure billions of dollars in government subsidies for corn ethanol in one of America’s biggest energy boondoggles."...
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7/19/12, “Ethanol Added $14.5 Billion to Consumer Motor Fuel Costs in 2011, Study Finds,” GlobalWarming.org, Marlo Lewis
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8/9/12, “Easing US ethanol mandate would help prevent food crisis-UN,” Reuters
“Global pressure on the United States to relax its ethanol quota mounted on Thursday as the top World Bank food official said an “immediate, temporary suspension” of the mandate could help head off another world food crisis.”…
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4/4/2008, “UN chief calls for review of biofuels policy,” UK Guardian, Julian Borger
“Ban Ki-moon speaks out amid global food shortage, 33 countries facing unrest as families go hungry”
“The UN’s own special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler,
called biofuels “a crime against humanity”,
and called for a five-year moratorium….
The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a comprehensive review of the policy on biofuels as a crisis in global food prices – partly caused by the increasing use of crops for energy generation -
- threatens to trigger global instability.”…
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3/28/11, “Biofuels Policy May Kill 200,000 Per Year in the Third World,” PR Newswire, Tucson, Ariz.
“U.S. and European policy to increase production of ethanol and other biofuels to displace fossil fuels is supposed to help human health by reducing “global warming.” Instead it has added to the global burden of death and disease.”…
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Even NY Mayor Bloomberg, a CO2 endangerment profiteer, says ethanol causes mass starvation. A UN official called biofuels a “crime against humanity” in 2008.
7/4/2008, “Biofuels May Be Even Worse than First Thought,” Der Spiegel
“Biofuels have driven up global food prices by 75 percent, according to the Guardian report, accounting for more than half of the 140 percent jump in price since 2002 of the food examined by the study. The paper claims that the report, completed in April, was not made public in order to avoid embarrassing US President George W. Bush….
“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” Oxfam policy advisor Robert Bailey told the Guardian on Friday."…
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9/7/12, “Why Do We Burn Our Food?” Hockey Schtick, Carl Brehmer
“It takes at least 2/3 gallon of fossil fuel, by the US Department of Energy’s own figures, to produce one gallon of ethanol.” “It takes about 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol….Each acre of corn requires 130 pounds of nitrogen and 55 pounds of phosphorous. Increased acreage means increased agricultural runoff that is creating aquatic “dead zones” in our rivers, bays and coastal areas.”…
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11/16/12, “EPA rejects governors’ requests to waive ethanol mandate,” Houston Chronicle, Jennifer Dlouhy
“The Obama administration on Friday rebuffed requests by Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the leaders of several other states to waive a federal renewable fuel mandate that requires ethanol to be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply.
In rejecting the waiver requests, the Environmental Protection Agency effectively disagreed with the states’ concerns that the mandate was spiking corn demand and prices following a drought that devastated crops in the Midwest. The EPA concluded the Renewable Fuel Standard would not cause “severe economic harm” to states and regions."...
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10/28/11, “UK firm’s failed biofuel dream wrecks lives of Tanzania villagers,” UK Guardian, Damian Carrington
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Ed. question: If the political class isn't committing genocide with the ethanol scam then what is genocide?
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