When the cure is worse than the disease

-By Dan Scott

In my last article I ended with mentioning that there will be increased Ethanol mandates on top of the absurdity of the failed government policy on electric generation. The current run up in food prices is devastating to the world’s poor. How else does one explain the food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Bangladesh? Are they so far away that it is easy for us to ignore, play ignorant or the part we played in it? We are looking at the beginning of a huge humanitarian crisis of epic proportions if ethanol mandates and subsidies are not immediately suspended.

Low global wheat stocks, coupled with the emergence of a virulent crop disease, are threatening the world’s food supply, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer told food aid groups Wednesday.

“We have never been less secure about the near-term future of wheat,” he said. “Here in the United States it is our most basic crop with a farm gate value of $16 billion (€10 billion). Global wheat stocks are at an unprecedented historic 30-year low, and U.S. wheat stocks are at unprecedented 60-year low.”

While the articles referenced here attempt to down play the seriousness of the food price rise by saying it is due to a number of causes, such semantics are lost on the world’s poor whose wages haven’t risen in tandem with the price of grains and rice. Regardless of the growth of India and China, ethanol made from corn or any other food crop or displaced food crop is the straw that breaks the camel’s back on food stocks. Is there a “food” shortage? Technically no by a sliver, a shortage by definition is not having enough supply to cover the demand. The fact that stocks exists means there is something. What there is for the poor of the world who live at the margins with nothing to spare is a money shortage, a severe reduction in their standard of living, for them it is a zero sum game. A person can starve to death when there is no shortage of food when the price is so high they can’t afford to eat.

I have spoken before regarding the impact of one group buying up as much as their lifestyle allows to the determent of others in regards to energy use. Here with the food price hikes we have an example of what happens when government policy exerts an artificial demand on a limited supply. The speculative bubble was created by the legislators in Congress and those in Europe with the Ethanol mandate and subsidy. If the mandate and subsidy didn’t exist, there would be no bubble. What we have here is an artificially produced constraint on food supply due to Ethanol caused by legislative fiat. This is precisely the same incompetence via so called public policy that caused the housing mortgage debacle, politicians interfering with the workings of the market by lacks lending standards which artificially created demand and hiked prices. Al Gore started the mess with Ethanol in 1994: The AGW supporters claim global warming will harm the poor of the world, I ask you, how can you support AGW and ethanol when in fact you are starving the world’s poor, the very people you claimed you’re trying to save. This is a classic case the cure being worse than the disease.

I will put this in very black and white terms: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have the power in their hands to alleviate the suffering of the world’s poor with an exercise of political courage by repealing the ethanol mandates and subsidies. If they fail to rise up to the challenge of our times, which by the way, they helped create, then they will go down in history as two people who condoned genocide of the world’s poor by sacrificing them on the altar of AGW just so they could sanctimoniously claim they were trying to save the planet. How many millions will die on the altar of AGW? How many is too many? Will you continue to close your eyes to the suffering of the world’s poor that you caused in ignorance if you claim you didn’t intend this result? If you didn’t intend starving the world’s poor, then you have an ethical obligation to undo the damage you caused. If on the other hand, you care little for the poor, then say nothing like Al Gore is doing now and let them starve.

Millions will literally starve to death due to the diversion of food crops to ethanol just to satisfy some politically correct ideology. The names of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be synonymous with starvation just as Neville Chamberlain is with appeasement. AGW and Ethanol have become the most grotesque abuse of environmentalism since Rachel Carlson instigated the deaths of millions of poor people in Africa due to her DDT environmental propaganda. By the end of summer we will be seeing starvation in the third world if we do not act immediately. It is outright genocide of the poor.

Lately, we have been presented with commercials featuring so called conservatives who appeared with liberal AGW supporters claiming we need to do something about Global Warming. The argument advanced by people such as Newt Gingrich, who collaborated with the AGW supporters is we must have a seat at the table to minimize any extreme solutions presented. However, to be at the table is to share the responsibility for the policy failures upon which were compromised such as Ethanol. Starving the world’s poor to save them from AGW is a failed policy in my book. There is no upside to being at the table, there are only negatives. Claiming that we must be at the table to limit the negative consequences is a tacit admission that any effort agreed to will result in failure. No thank you, I choose not to share the blame as though I agreed with the premise in the first place, instead I demand accountability of those who make decisions. Repeal the Ethanol mandates and subsidies now!
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.

Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.