PrintDecember 18, 2007
UN issues warning, but averts eyes from its own role
The United Nations is issuing a warning about the world's food stocks dwindling, highlighting the possible future consequences of the future global warming it believes is coming. It mentions the problems created by high oil prices for aid agencies shipping emergency food supplies.
But there is one factor that right now is raising food prices and diminishing the supply. A factor which grows out of the UN's own efforts. A factor which is conspicuously downplayed in this report written by Elisabeth Rosenthal in the International Herald-Tribune, published by the New York Times Company:
Biofuels.
The only mention is an entirely subsidiary and indirect factor, as noted here:
The only mention is an entirely subsidiary and indirect factor, as noted here:
Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
Got that? Global warming has decreased crop yields in some places (high temperatures are actually generaly a positive development for crops and no doubt in other some places yields are up). Biofuels are lumped together with cattle feed as a demand factor, and mentioned only in passing. Compare the extra verbiage for cattle feed with the treatment of biofuels. One word, and then nothing more.
Taking corn and other food crops and converting them into ethanol decreases the food supply, raising prices on the remaining supplies destined for human consumption. Every corn farmer in the Middle West knows this, for they had a very, very good year thanks to ethanol subsidies and the rush to proclaim companies are "doing something" about global warming. Corn prices, followed with a lag by beef and portk prices, are up over recent years' levels.
Taking corn and other food crops and converting them into ethanol decreases the food supply, raising prices on the remaining supplies destined for human consumption. Every corn farmer in the Middle West knows this, for they had a very, very good year thanks to ethanol subsidies and the rush to proclaim companies are "doing something" about global warming. Corn prices, followed with a lag by beef and portk prices, are up over recent years' levels.
The hypothetical dangers of global warming, hyped so vigorously by the UN, are creating conditions that actually damage the world's billions of poor people for whom an adequate diet is a matter of affordability.
The food supply is acting as a coal miner's canary, warning us of even bigger privations ahead. Wait until industries have to shut down and electricity multiplies in price, should the restrictions necessary to meet the goal of a radical reduction on carbon dioxide emissions ever be enforced. For rich countries, it will be a matter of unemployment, slowed or negative economic growth, and cutbacks.
But for the poor, which the UN ostensibly cares about, it will be malnutrition or starvation, disease, and mass deaths, should the Warmists succeed in enforcing their dirigiste aims.
Hat tip: Drudge
Update: Reader Ted Ivester emails:
Just curious. What has the impact been in 3rd World Countries with regard to the EU and UN resisting genetically altered crops?
Update: Reader Ted Ivester emails:
Just curious. What has the impact been in 3rd World Countries with regard to the EU and UN resisting genetically altered crops?
