The Buzz on Biofuels: Worse Than Dickensian
This piece comes from China Confidential– an exceptional blog that we highly recommend you look at.
And you thought a lump of coal in a stocking was a cruel Christmas gift…. The coal could at least be burned to help heat a house. If Big Agribusiness and a handful of so-called clean energy companies have their way, you won’t be able to afford heat–or food to eat–in a future holiday season.
Well, maybe not you–the reader–but for millions of the world’s poorest people, acute hunger, preceded by even worse poverty, best describes the fate that awaits them. Of course, it is all for a good, clean cause, according to biofuels-backing politicians.
Really. In a world where tens of millions go hungry, the ethically deprived politicians of the economically developed nations are legislating biofueled famine and food inflation in the name of combating global warming and achieving energy independence (an unrealistic but wildly popular goal).
Growing crops to fuel cars instead of to feed people and animals–please take time to think about that during this holiday season. Could the teachings of any great religious or spiritual tradition possibly support such a sickeningly sinful scheme? With all due respect to the predominantly Christian communities that comprise American Corn Country, can anyone imagine Jesus turning his back on the multitudes in order to feed–i.e. fuel–a fleet of SUVs? Would Jesus turn water into ethanol instead of wine? The questions admittedly border on blasphemy. But mandating biofuels is exactly that–a blasphemy–against reason and common sense and universal ideals of social justice, righteousness, and loving-kindness.
As shown by the digest below, however, there is reason to believe that the madness will end. Just as politicians from left to right have lined up to back biofuels, a similar phenomenon is emerging on the opposite side of the issue. The Communist Fidel Castro and the libertarian Cato Institute have both come out strongly against biofuels. Greenpeace and The Heritage Foundation have condemned biofuels. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Monetary Fund have raised warning flags about the threat that biofuels pose to food security. Throughout the developing world, people are mobilizing to pressure their governments and the international community to say no to biofuels. Europeans are also organizing against biofuels. Even communities in the American Midwest are questioning the supposed benefits of the wasteful biofuels boom. Already, a few farmers can be heard saying: “Hell no! We don’t want to grow food for fuel.” They find the idea fundamentally offensive.
Yes, there is reason for hope. Seasons change. Tides turn. Opinion shifts. Redemption is always possible–even for politicians.
Who knows? Maybe the Ghost of Christmas Present will visit European and American lawmakers this holiday season to remind them–the way it reminded Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol–of the suffering caused by Want and Ignorance.
But to compare Scrooge, the main character in Dickens’ novel, to today’s mandate-mad politicians is unfair–to Scrooge. Though mean spirited and miserly, he at least supported the social order of his era. When asked to contribute to the poor on Christmas Eve, he inquired if the workhouses and the prisons were still operating. Assured that they were, he expressed relief, knowing that the poor could continue to toil in misery and survive (more or less) at the edge of existence. In contrast with the fictional Scrooge, the politicians backing biofuels are effectively overturning the established world order by robbing the poor of the most basic human right–to food.
Snatching bread from the mouths of the poor is actually much worse than dickensian–an adjective that refers to the cruelties of Victorian England. It is hard to find a word to adequately describe the horror that is being perpetrated in the name of clean energy….
Go to China Confidential to read what others are saying about biofuels.
