Food and fuel follies
May 8, 2008
By Ed Feulner - “What could possibly go wrong?” That’s what members of Congress probably thought when they started shoveling bigger subsidies at ethanol producers. Now, with food riots erupting in some parts of the world, we have our answer: a lot.
Other factors - a weak dollar, high energy costs, low crop yields in places such as Australia - have played a role in this crisis. But diverting food to fuel is clearly a…
Guns for Oil
Wall Street Journal
May 7, 2008; Page A18
Speaking of energy (see here), we can’t help but give more attention to a recent press release from some of the Senate’s leading liberals. Charles Schumer, Byron Dorgan, Bernie Sanders, Bob Casey and Mary Landrieu are demanding that President Bush tell OPEC nations to increase their oil supplies or risk losing arms deals with the United States. The Senators say U.S. consumers need the price relief that only increased oil production can…
National Review Online, Planet Gore
May 5, 2008
Food for Fuel Is No Laughing Matter [Marlo Lewis]
Cliff May begins his NRO column, “The Hunger,” by retelling an old joke about astronomers discovering a giant meteor hurtling towards Earth and the Washington Post running a headline: “World to end tomorrow: minorities and poor to suffer most.” While it is fine to make light of the media’s tendency to paint any change in market conditions as a class issue, in this case the joke doesn’t work.…
‘Let Them Burn Ethanol’
by Iain Murray (more by this author)
Human Events, April 30, 2008
American grocery stores are starting to introduce food rationing. Wal Mart is restricting the amount of rice customers can buy. In Mexico and Yemen, in Egypt and Indonesia, the poor are taking to the streets to protest massive rise in food prices as well as shortages. A short distance from our shores, the troubled nation of Haiti is in crisis again; Haitians, dependent on U.S. grain imports,…
From the Los Angeles Times
Food or fuel?
As global starvation worsens, the U.S. plans to devote vast amounts of grain to producing ethanol.
February 26, 2008
Something is very wrong with this picture: The United Nations’ World Food Program has been hit so hard by skyrocketing grain prices that it may be forced to cut off some food aid to the world’s poorest countries, while the United States is planning to turn record quantities of corn into automotive fuel.
The astonishing callousness of burning…
Earlier today, Cliff May posted a column in National Review Online (NRO) advocating federal subsidies for flex-fuel vehicles and bio-fuel dispensaries, largly on national security grounds. This naturally provoked several responses on NRO’s Planet Gore Blog from free-market types, including yours truly. I reproduce below the lively exchange, current as of 5:30 p.m.
The Washington, D.C. Examiner
Most presidential seekers want energy socialism
Sheldon Richman, 2008-01-24
WASHINGTON - One of the great unnoticed curiosities of the presidential campaign is that even the party that claims devotion to free enterprise is full-out socialist - or, more precisely, fascist - when it comes to energy policy. Listening to the presidential forum the other night, I was struck by how anti-free market all but one of the Republican candidates, Ron Paul, are on this matter.
…
A fine commentary by Robert Bryce. My one quibble is that the largest supplier of crude oil in the U.S. market is the United States–then Canada, then Mexico. This observation, of course, buttresses rather than detracts from Bryce’s point.
Myths About Breaking Our Foreign Oil Habit
By Robert Bryce
Washington Post, Sunday, January 13, 2008; B03
With oil prices still flirting with $100 a barrel, everyone is talking about the need for “energy independence.” Late last year, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security…
I attach below Sen. Domenici’s remarks for those who can’t get enough bombast about the glories of mandates. Three points jump out at me.
First, Domenici inconsistently condemns the House bill’s tax increases and renewable portfolio standard (RPS) while advocating a 36-billion gallon renewable fuel standard (RFS). Doesn’t he realize that an RPS is just an RFS for electricity? Can’t he see that they are both Soviet-style production quotas? Sen. Domenici complains that the House energy bill includes tax hikes; doesn’t…
