Back Talk

Some of the falling sky crowd has even blamed the world food shortage on man-made global warming turning their liberal little heads away from the real issues. The bureaucrat politicians, feeling the itch to do something about gas prices, are taking taxpayer money to pay farmers to take 15 million acres of U.S. farm land out of food production, and convert it to growing corn for ethanol. Nice for the farmers but bad for everyone else. This lame, misguided attempt to do something about the high oil prices – put food in our gas tanks instead of gas – is rife with unintended consequences. It’s hard to get a scientific estimate of the corn that will be required to produce enough ethanol for our needs; however, one study showed that, in order to decrease gasoline use by just 10% with ethanol, it would require using 43% of our entire production of field crops. A strong food factor is that China and India are growing at an amazing rate and requiring more and more food products. As routinely happens, some products suffered a bad crop year because of weather; this year it was rice which has a big effect upon the middle and Far East where it is a primary staple. I don’t worry too much about a government that leaves me alone to do what I think is best, but we should all worry about a government that uses its power to tell people what is best for all of us. I don’t worry that our mainstream media is biased, that it is 90% Liberal Democrat, but we should all worry when the media, because of its influence, sways opinion regarding the economy as well as the Iraq war, the global warming hoax, and now the food shortage.