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.
The faux environmentalist are so blind to what their actions have done to people, if they care. They are most likely so impressed by their ideas they are incapable of taking an unbiased hard look at what they are doing. They will pass the starvation off on greedy capitalist instead. They really don't care what their actions do to people all they are interested in is power and control and people are expendable after all, so they think. There has to be a special dark place in the next life for these people.
ReplyDeleteRefusing to use the God given resources that are available in abundance and calling those resources evil is incredible. That has to come from a haughty arrogance and a over inflated ego gone wild.
I would add Haiti to that list of top countries for malnourishment.
Yes, that was the "irony" -- if that's the right word -- blaming large corporations for biofuel industry starving children in third world countries, but what does one expect when burning food for fuel.
DeleteDuring the great depression of the 30s my grandparents farmed in SW Minnesota. Prices for grain and livestock were next to nothing. Many farmers started burning corn for fuel to keep warm in the winter. My grandfather refused to do it. He said that was food and it was a sin to burn food. They would have to find some other means to keep warm in the winter even if a family of six kids and two adults had to make due in two rooms of the house that were heated. The bedrooms did not get heated. They slept in the cold with a lot of covers.
DeleteThey burned corn cobs and what little wood they could find on the prairie after what little coal they could afford ran out.
He would have a fit today with ethanol for cars. Apparently he knew something most people are unaware of today. Starving people to put fuel in vehicles, it can't get much more ugly than that. It comes in a close second to war.
There is a saying about statistical arguments and those who make them. I'm sure you have heard it. It goes like this: figures lie and liars figure.
ReplyDeleteThe "figures" 50% and 12% differ because the two organizations use different definitions and thus are not describing the same condition as you imply. Un is talking about malnutrition while who is talking about SEVERE ACUTE malnutrition.
You figure that because it's the nyt and the un it has to be wrong because your myth can't be wrong. Go figure.
I agree completely; it's all about definitions. And somehow, whether it's 12% or 50%, I doubt the starving children care about definitions -- and their parents will never understand why "they" are burning food for fuel.
DeleteI was surprised to see the New York Times print such a story. But perhaps I should not have been surprised: see note above -- blaming "big corporations" for converting food to fuel. What did faux environmentalists think would happen if the government provided incentives for biofuels?
Time to move on. Back to the Bakken. Thank you for taking time to write.
Yes, when I first heard "they" were going to convert corn into ethanol in our country some years ago, I was absolutely appalled. Still am. I can't even begin to think what some folks in developing countries would think if they knew.
Delete