Vanilla 1.1.3 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
When the Bush government gleefully announced it was getting behind biofuels, agriculture experts knew the program had nothing to do with helping out the planet: It was just another massive subsidy for Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, the monstrous food-processing conglomerates who've been driving U.S. farm policy for decades.
So when the news broke that the production of biofuels was doing more harm to the planet than helping it -- and making life painful for the most impoverished people on Earth to boot -- who did the opinion-makers and policy wonks criticize?
Amazingly, the U.S. agriculture lobby got off remarkably easy.
The biofuels debacle was blamed on "global-warming alarmists" and "climate-change scarecrows" who somehow forced the governments of the world to mess with the global food supply.
True enough, the move toward biofuels was always sold to the public as an environmentally responsible idea. And some elected officials swallowed this hooey themselves, since creating more subsidies for food processors (note that actual farmers rarely benefit) is always a popular legislative practice.
But the worldwide price of food is also on the rise because the cost of creating food is ballooning with the price of oil. It takes an ocean of fossil fuel to manufacture fertilizers, drive tractors and harvest crops off any field -- and another ocean of oil to ship those crops around the world and keep them cool in refrigerator trucks and containers.
Posted By: rosencrentzAl Gore idiots
Posted By: rosencrentzDoes Bush count?
How about the politicians who preach "family values", whatever that is, and are sleeping around, get caught, and then apologize to the world, with their poor wife and children just off to the side of the cameras?