Updates
February 4, 2013: the administration will press on expanding biofuels -- more ethanol even though "everyone" agrees it's a bad idea. Especially the starving Ethiopians.
Original Post
I can't remember when I started the "top ten lists" but it was back in August of last year when I added the top ten "bad ideas gone worse" list. The worse idea, that keeps getting worse, is the issue of biofuels. At the link you will see where this issue rests.
Now, today, a case in post. A story in the New York Times sent to me by Don. The biofuels industry is converting Guatemala corn from food to fuel, where folks can least afford it.
In a country where most families must spend about two thirds of their income on food, “the average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development,” said Katja Winkler, a researcher at Idear, a Guatemalan nonprofit organization that studies rural issues. Roughly 50 percent of the nation’s children are chronically malnourished, the fourth-highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations.
The American renewable fuel standard mandates that an increasing volume of biofuel be blended into the nation’s vehicle fuel supply each year to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and to bolster the nation’s energy security. Similarly, by 2020, transportation fuels in Europe will have to contain 10 percent biofuel.
Large companies like Pantaleon Sugar Holdings, Guatemala’s leading sugar producer, are profiting from that new demand, with recent annual growth of more than 30 percent. The Inter-American Development Bank says the new industry could bring an infusion of cash and jobs to Guatemala’s rural economy if developed properly. For now, the sugar industry directly provides 60,000 jobs and the palm industry 17,000, although the plantations are not labor-intensive.
Meanwhile, faux environmentalists in the US have killed the coal industry; would like to kill the fracking industry (and the domestic oil and gas industry in the process); have moved oil from pipelines to the more dangerous and more CO2-emitting method of rail; and, now they can add starvation among the developing countries to their well-thought out programs.
Thank goodness we have the New York Times to print the "bad ideas gone worse" and to shed light on what the faux environmentalists are bringing to our brave new world. Where temperatures are expected to increase by a degree or two over the next century under the worse scenario; data already suggests that this may be changing. But I digress.
You know, if Guatamala has the fourth-highest rate of malnourished children in the world -- wow, it's hard to come up with three countries that could possibly be worse: Ethiopia, the Sudan,....
But The Guardian is correct: global warming will mean more malnourished children. But not for the reasons suggested. Increased temperatures and increased CO2 at the levels predicted will actually increase global vegetation (no links; multiple posts in the past two months). The crazy solutions to a non-problem, like converting food to fuel, will be the real reason "global warming" will result in more malnourished children. But I digress, again ....
Back to the three countries that might be worse than Guatamala for malnourished children: Ethiopia, the Sudan, Rwanda, ...
By the way, someone's data is out of date, or there's a bit of exaggeration, or I'm misreading something, but according to the most recent data available (through 2011), Guatemala isn't even close to number four on the list: it's number 46, and not even close to 50% -- it's 12%. Still atrocious but not quite what the New York Times stated. They are obviously using different sources. By the way, no country hits 50% for childhood malnourishment, though several countries come awful close. This source is the World Health Organization. The Times source was the UN.
Sorry for all the digressions. It's the only way to keep the faux environmentalists off balance.
