Can We Have Our Green and Afford to Eat it Too? by Wayne Silverman
Once again the Western nations of Europe and the United States have manipulated the global food supply so as to weaken the people least capable of defending themselves economically, the Third World; this time in the name of environmentalism. In the West's rush to save the planet's environment, do we care if more people are starving because of our misguided attempts at environmental engineering? Or is the so called cure for global warming more important than the people of the Third World?
A newly published paper from the World Bank attributes 80 percent of the rise in the cost of food to bio fuels production. While there remains some question concerning the actual working of the document (and some evidence of internal censorship by World Bank) the document remains clear that the global food shortage is directly attributable to the increased production of bio fuels.
"the combination of higher energy prices and related increases in fertilizer prices, and dollar weakness caused food prices to rise by about 35 percent from January 2002 until February 2008 and the remainder of the 140 percent actual increase was probably due to bio-fuels" - Don Mitchell, World Bank
The real danger here, from a political standpoint is that the western developed nations are the primary perpetrators behind the growth of bio fuels to power cars and energy generation. Given the major decline in the availability of food stuffs to third world nations, and the escalation of food related inflation (many products up 40 to 50% in the last 6 months) I wonder how long it will take for consumers to realize that the whole "green fuels revolution" has simply taken food off their plates, increased the cost of the food which remains available and has miserably failed to reduce the West's dependence on foreign oil (particularly in America).
Anyone have anymore good ideas to save the environment? Can we maybe do it without starving the people of planet Earth next time?
Wayne Silverman (me) currently lives outside Phildelphia with his wife and a cat named Angela. I'm a jack of all trades having worked in Real Estate, Finance, Marketing, Construction, Massage Therapy (certified Shiatsu Therapist), Holistic Healing (Reiki Master)( I like to think I'm a jack of all trades master of SOME!) and recently began a masters degree program in Accounting. Currently I have a day job at well known financial services company... And I still find time to enjoy a good bottle of wine every now and then (read: at least once a week!)
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