The Truth isn't always nice to hear

I really hated the title of the following article, yet I find it hard to argue too much with the contents. Is it a case of "Sad, but true?" You decide:

Glenn Beck: U.S. is a suicidal superpower

[...] Food and gas prices have been all over the news lately, and even a big dumb rodeo clown like me can see that it's all connected. Our policies, which try to cater to everyone from oil company executives to environmentalists, end up benefiting no one -- and now we're all paying the price.

I know that real economists probably will say that the causes of these skyrocketing prices are extremely complicated to understand, but the truth is that it's actually pretty simple: We've done this to ourselves.

I don't know if it's because of our arrogance, our stupidity or maybe both, but I believe that history may one day judge America as the most suicidal superpower of all time. After all, what country that cares about its future would do what America has done to its supply of food and fuel, two of the most critical things that any civilization needs to survive?

For example, look at the way we treat our food supply. We've spent decades giving billions of dollars in government subsidies with incentives for the wrong things, we've mandated that huge areas of farmland stay open for "conservation" and we're using grains that could feed tens of millions of people to make a crappy biofuel that you can't even buy anywhere. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) Beck's got plenty more to say about it too. I don't like reading it, because it's harsh, yet it reminds me of the adage "the truth hurts".
We naturally hate pain, but the pain of hurt is always a warning, and one that you are meant to heed. Will we?

I've just found it incredible that our nation would be so careless with things as basic as Food and Fuel. Yet it's not as if nobody has tried to foresee and deal with some of this. If we had begun environmentally-conscious safe drilling in ANWAR 10 years ago, we would have more fuel now. It would not have solved all our fuel problems, but it would have helped considerably. If we had built more gas refineries it would have helped lower gas prices now. Nuclear power is more viable than ever, with 80% of nuclear waste being recyclable, and the potential to recycle or render safe the remaining 20% with future technology.

President Bush has pushed for these and other solutions, but has been blocked at every turn by radical environmentalists, who instead have pushed for inefficient disasters like turning our food into fuel. The Republicans will take a beating for going along with this Al-Gore Democrat lunacy, and so they should. Yet the blame should be spread around; there are representatives on both sides of the aisle that have gotten too far out of touch with reality, that they could participate in helping this to happen. They all need a wake up call.

Not all of Beck's article is doom and gloom, there are some bright spots:

[...] Fortunately, there is some good news in all of this: Oil prices this high mean that a lot of formerly dismissed alternatives will finally make good economic sense.

For example, back in 1980, Congress passed the Energy Security Act, which led to the creation of something called the Synthetic Fuels Corp. (SFC). Lawmakers provided SFC with up to $88 billion in loans and incentives to get started (the equivalent of about $230 billion in today's dollars) with the goal of creating two million barrels a day of synthetic oil within seven years.

So why aren't you putting SFC oil into your SUV right now? Well, it turns out that members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries didn't appreciate the competition so they started bringing down the price of oil. From 1980, when SFC launched, to 1986, when it was shut down, oil went from more than $39 a barrel to less than $8 a barrel. Suddenly, synthetic oil didn't seem so important anymore.

In announcing the SFC's closure, then-Energy Secretary John Herrington said that oil prices had simply dropped too low to make it a viable business.

But the good news is that those economics don't work anymore. The state of Montana, which is leading the synthetic fuel charge, says we can now make it for somewhere around $55 a barrel. That's more than a 50 percent discount from what it costs to buy the real stuff.

It's the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to use OPEC's price gouging and monopoly against it. [...]

It's time to abandon the policies of political correctness and emotional hysteria. We need to start actually supporting policies that are going to work, and insisting that our politicians support an implement them, and stop playing politically-correct games with the basics of our survival.
     

McCain, Corn and Ethanol Mandates

McCain urges Bush to waive ethanol rules

John McCain has joined 23 fellow Republicans in urging the Bush administration to waive requirements for high ethanol production, blaming the alternative fuel for driving up US food prices.

McCain has long opposed government subsidies for ethanol, but the presidential hopeful tempered his criticism in advance of this winter's caucus in corn-growing Iowa. Despite praising ethanol as "a good alternative" to gas, McCain lost Iowa by a large margin.

The Republican's latest denunciation of ethanol came in a letter to Stephen Johnson, head of the US environmental protection agency. Two dozen senators, including McCain, asked Johnson to waive an ethanol mandate that many in their party backed a half year ago.

"It isn't a surprise that food prices are rising when more than 25% of the corn grown today is taken out of the food supply and instead used for subsidised ethanol production," McCain said in a statement.

"We need to put an end to flawed government policies that distort the markets, raise food prices artificially, and pit producers against consumers."

[...]

Barack Obama, who represents the mid-western state of Illinois, has defended ethanol amid controversy over corn's role in driving up the price of fuel and food. McCain's criticism of ethanol mandates may bolster his reputation for forthrightness, but it also could bolster Obama's claim to contest right-leaning Iowa in the November general election. [...]

Obama and the Democrats want to continue supporting corn-ethanol because it's politically correct on the left, and because rising food prices may help them win the White House in November, even though it's a problem created primarily by Democrats (Al Gore's deciding vote in 1994 pushed the legislation through). So ironically, the Democrats will be offering themselves as a solution to a problem THEY created!

The article also mentions restrictive tariffs against importing cheap sugar-based ethanol from Brazil. If ethanol production is supposed to be about solving our energy needs, then why are we blocking importation of cheap sources? McCain is also risking loosing support from Republican politicians from corn growing states by opposing the ethanol mandate. It seems that American ethanol production may be more about politics of government hand-outs than problem solving. Read the whole thing for more details about the politics of corn and government subsidies.


Related Link:

YOU CANT EAT ETHANOL ... FOOD VS. FUEL
     

Food Prices & Climate Change Hysteria

What Happens When You Put Food Into Cars

Rising food costs due to Ethanol Boondoggle

When Ronald Reagan said "The government isn't the solution, it's the problem", he wasn't kidding. Ethanol is a prime example.

The Democrats are especially good at creating "solutions" that create even more problems, that in turn, require even more government. But this ethanol scam went through with the help of Republicans, who "felt" the need to "do something" in response to the global warming hysteria, instead of sticking with good science, reason and the known facts. This foolishness is the result of responding to hysterical hype.

Now the Democrats will use rising food prices as yet another reason to turn Republicans out of office, when in reality it was the Democrats who pushed hardest for the ethanol program. Yet it will be the Republicans that the MSM will blame.

The best thing the Republicans could do now is reverse this bad decision, but will any of them have the guts to do it, lest they offend the adherents of the Global Warming Religion?

UPDATE 04-09-08. This link from the "Government Is Not Your Daddy" blog:

Alternative Energy and the Law of Unintended Consequences

[...] Our national “investment” in subsidizing bio-fuel production has been so overwhelmingly successful that it’s had the effect of repurposing the majority of our corn crops to ethanol production. It has also motivated farmers to divert production from other crops to crops that can be used for biofuels.

Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of this noble effort have been to raise food prices, not only here in the U.S., but around the world. Rising food prices hit the poor the hardest, and accelerate the spread of poverty. In an article in Foreign Affairs, titled How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor, authors Runge and Senauer said ”Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn - which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.” Even as food shortages increase in countries where people are already starving, the U.S. is being forced to reduce its international food aid due to rising food costs at home, largely due to the diversion of crops to biofuel production.

The high demand for biofuels is also having an unintended impact on some of the environmentalists’ own pet causes. [...]

This article also goes into detail about the harmful effects of diluting gasoline with 10% ethanol, and the many other unintended harmful side effects of the Ethanol Boondoggle. Read the whole thing... and weep! Then demand that our politicians not only stop this nonsense, but reverse course before the damage spreads further.
     

Rising food costs due to Ethanol Boondoggle

I warned about this in a previous post in May of last year. Now it's happening, and it's not only a waste of taxpayer's money, it's damaging our economy and causing food prices to rise world-wide. Walter Williams at Townhall.com gives us the details:

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

[...] Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities.

[...]

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

[...]

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money.

[...]

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. [...]

I've only excerpted a few things wrong with ethanol from the article, there's more. Read the whole thing. I can't believe our government, both parties, is actually doing this to us. We can thank the global warming hoax and it's attendant hysteria too, for helping it along.




Related Link:

Bakers lobby govt to help ease wheat crunch