Food Crisis: More on Ethanol, GM Crops, Commodities Speculation

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, I'm recyclin' a bigass comment I made over to BigCityLiberal where MJ's pointin' the finger at ol' Lyin' Brian Mulroney. Seems Brine is on the board at ADM, the bigass commodities guys whose lobbyin' efforts have been payin' off nicely in the government-mandated ethanol department.

I pointed fingers at ethanol before and I still got a finger pointed at the dumbass food-for-fuel idiocy. Ethanol is one of many factors in the current food crisis. From what I can gather, ethanol is estimated to be causing somewhere between 5% and 15% of the increased costs.

Dalton Ginty weaseled out of any rethinking on biofuels by declaring that ethanol is not a "dominant" factor in the high cost of food. His brother, MP David Ginty sez the selfsame thing and is still pushin' fer Canada to double it's targets for ethanol-to-gas blends over the next two years.

The problem is that there is a combination of factors and it may be quite likely that no single factor is dominant. The high cost of fossil fuels is probably the biggest factor and it is a factor that exacerbates and compounds other factors.

Biofuel subsidization must cease. Even if it is only responsible for 5% of the cost increase, that means millions more people who are 5% short of having enough to eat.

The role of agri-corporations like ADM and Monsanto is more than just the ethanol angle. Over the past few years, money has flowed into commodities speculation. There's about 20x the traditional capital at play in commodities right now. That's because speculators are making huge profits on commodities. ADM, DeKalb. Monsanto, etc are commodities businesses that are reaping the rewards of that speculation.

Monsanto et al stand to win in their fight to get genetically modified foods accepted worldwide. GM seeds are being sold as a sure way to increase agricultural productivity in the third world. Except that increase is temporary and ensures continued reliance on already high-priced seeds.

All the parties were wrong on biofuels. Even the Greens. We can point fingers and there's plenty of blame to go around.

Eat meat every day? You're part of the problem.
Got a diversified RSP with exposure to commodities? You're part of the problem.
Waste energy and drive up fuel costs by driving when you could walk? You're part of the problem.
Support a party that endorses ethanol subsidies? You're part of the problem.

But, so what if we're all part of the problem? We're just a small part. right? Right. But the problem is hunger and starvation for 1 billion people who live on less than $2 a day. A small part of the problem may represent many, many hungry people.

Again, every party got this wrong. In politics, the toughest thing to do seems to be to admit a mistake. The ethanol mistake is a factor in the starvation and deaths of millions. Politicians and party policy wonks need to step up, admit error and change policy.

We, who are active in our parties, should be agitating within our own ranks for a rethink on biofuels. I am doing so in the GPC. I encourage LPC members to write to the McGuinty Bros. The Dippers are startin' to make some intelligent noises on this issue but, like every other party, official NDP policy is still calling for strong support for biofuels.

JB

Make Lunch, Not War

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, the new UN chief Ban-Ki Moon, is up on his hindlegs warnin' the world what's gonna happen if we don't get busy and feed the hungry folks who's sufferin' on accounta the high price of food. People will die. Governments will fall. Commodities speculators will get rich. That ain't so much a prediction as it is an assessment of what's already happening.

The UN World Food Program has said it needs an additional $500 million right now to avert catastrophe. The US came through with $200 million. Maybe that sounds like a lot of money. It ain't.

Every single day, 365 days a year, the US spends over $380 million on the war in Iraq. $200 million is what the US spends on the Iraq fiasco in about 13 or 14 hours. Every 13 or 14 hours.

If the US Iraq military spending was cut by less than 1% and the money was diverted to food aid, the threat to global security would be reduced considerably. Not only that, thousands and thousands of starving people would be able to eat enough to live. And, not least of all, the US would be hailed as saviours and heroes, instead of being damned as killers, occupiers and exploiters.

Us Canajuns ain't spending ourselves into bankruptcy quite as fast as our Merkin neighbours. We're spending $1 billion a year in Afghanistan. That's about $2.7 million per day. On war. Meanwhile, First Nations folks in Canada are rejoicing over a recent announcement of $330 million to provide clean drinking water on reserves. That's about the same amount of money that Bruce Power is over budget on refurbishing a couple of nuclear reactors; about the same amount we spend in the failed Afghan mission every 4 months.

I saw a bigass report on one of the big Merkin TV network news shows last night where they was all in a flap about the price of pizza goin' up. It's kinda tough to sympathize when we know that the poor bastards in Haiti are eatin' dirt just to get something into their aching bellies.

A couplafew days ago, I posted up a boog story entitled, McGuinty: "Let them eat dirt." In today's Trawna Star, I see my title is bein' reduced, re-used and recycled: Let them eat dirt?

I don't mind 'em usin' my paraphrase from Marie Antoinette's famous quip. Today's title, "Make Lunch, Not War", comes from an old hippie anti-Vietnam War slogan: "Make Love, Not War". The MSM is welcome to adopt it.

JimBobby