Earlier today I heard a talk on America’s energy problems by journalist turned author Robert Bryce as part of the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions program. The talk itself was nothing out of the ordinary but Bryce harped on a point that caught my interest, the immorality of putting food resources towards making fuel. Coming from a country where paying a couple extra cents for corn is nothing, I never thought of the implications using food for fuel could have on poverty stricken countries where the average daily wage is 25 cents.
In a world where 960 million people go hungry every day, how ridiculous is it that our nation mandates the use of food to fuel our over-sized SUV’s?
Imagine how painful life is for a man who works all day simply to feed his family when he sees a 30% rise in prices because of decreased supply.
I can hear the confusion in their voices as I try and explain our desire to reduce green house emissions by using corn based fuels in our gasoline. “You are doing what? You burn food while people starve, so that when you drive your SUV to McDonald’s and buy a BigMac. By doing this you reduce your CO2 emissions by 5% and my family goes hungry. And for what? to make yourself feel better?”
This is not an imaginary effect created to scare people from using Ethanol. It’s real and its causing havoc on global populations, in Mexico, in the Philippines, in Bangladesh, in China, and in India people every day face rising food.
While ethanol production from corn and soy beans is not the only cause of rising food prices it is a major cause.
In 2007 the US used 2.3 billion bushels of grain to create a total of 6.5 billion gallons of Ethanol. While this may, on the surface seem like a significant amount of ethanol consider that the US uses 232.5 billion barrels of oil per year. Ethanol is just a drop in the bucket, but that 2.3 billion bushels could be feeding 115 million people a year. It is hard to argue that removing enough food to feed 115 million people does not have an effect on global food prices and, unlike you and me, to millions of people that extra penny is the difference between life and death.
So as America considers its transition away from oil, it is important that we consider not only the environmental or economic costs of our actions but also the human costs. People matter.
I apologize for the long delay between posts, but hopefully this will generate some discussion. Most posts to come, I promise.
