Feed An American Liberal’s Hybrid, Starve A Third-Worlder

A few posts ago I said I was a global food-shortage denier. I stand by my denial, in that I don’t believe that global warming, or “climate change” as the left loves to call it now (because it is harder to define and therefore easier to defend), is the cause of any global food shortage. However, I do find this interesting. It seems that global warming may have caused food shortages - if by global warming you mean the overreaction to the alleged threat of global warming has caused food shortages.

Unlike “global warming,” food rioting is a planet-wide phenomenon, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Ivory Coast to the tortilla rampages in Mexico and even pasta protests in Italy.

So what happened?

Well, Western governments listened to the eco-warriors, and introduced some of the “wartime measures” they’ve been urging. The EU decreed that 5.75 percent of petrol and diesel must come from “biofuels” by 2010, rising to 10 percent by 2020. The U.S. added to its 51 cents-per-gallon ethanol subsidy by mandating a five-fold increase in “biofuels” production by 2022.

The result is that big government accomplished at a stroke what the free market could never have done: They turned the food supply into a subsidiary of the energy industry. When you divert 28 percent of U.S. grain into fuel production, and when you artificially make its value as fuel higher than its value as food, why be surprised that you’ve suddenly got less to eat? Or, to be more precise, it’s not “you” who’s got less to eat but those starving peasants in distant lands you claim to care so much about.

Heigh-ho. In the greater scheme of things, a few dead natives keeled over with distended bellies is a small price to pay for saving the planet, right? Except that turning food into fuel does nothing for the planet in the first place. That tree the U.S. Marines are raising on Iwo Jima was most likely cut down to make way for an ethanol-producing corn field: Researchers at Princeton calculate that to date the “carbon debt” created by the biofuels arboricide will take 167 years to reverse.

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death. On April 15, the Independent, the impeccably progressive British newspaper, editorialized: “The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?”

Eh, my conscience is clear, I drive a big-ass gasoline-guzzling SUV.

QUESTION: When Did Racism Become Trendy?

ANSWER:  When Barack Hussein Obama decided to run for president with the support of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his long-time mentor (we’re talking 20 years).

Now sit back and imagine for a moment. What would the response be, by blacks and the liberal elite media, if a white person were giving this speech about the innate differences between blacks and whites?  Come on, you don’t have to imagine very hard, do you?  It’s happened before in our history.  Racist whites used that excuse to segregate schools and diners and bathrooms not too long ago if you remember.

And good men like Martin Luther King, Jr. marched against that kind of thinking and policy.

But now, it’s okay evidently.  More than okay.  It’s the new trendy thing. 

The Obama thing.

Oh yes, and before anyone jumps on me for using the words of Reverend Wright against Obama, you should know that Barry himself said his relationship with this racist, anti-American, anti-Semite is a legitimate political issue. Of course, he then got pissed when McCain used it as such, but what do you expect from a guy who hangs with the likes of Reverend Wright.

Obama is not bringing us together folks.  He is driving us apart.

UPDATE:

Tons of stuff in the blogosphere about Wright’s racist speech (in the video above).  Most of it saying that it is killing Obama’s chances of getting the nomination, much less winning the general election, but then there is this.

And now, for a really far-out theory… Wright goes out, makes even more outrageous remarks, and it gives Obama the opportunity to finally sever the ties. A statement like, “I loved this man, but I cannot abide what he is saying now… I am leaving that church and must disavow Jeremiah Wright.”

Issue resolved. Obama is given credit for being a healer, for a courageous move, for standing up against divisiveness at great personal emotional expense, etc. …

Hmmm, stranger things have happened. And while it would certainly help him with the media and his supporters in their talking-points, I don’t believe the typically bitter, gun-toting, God-clinging, white person is going to buy it.  What with our brains being wired differently and all.

** I also corrected some typos and added some clarification. 

UPDATE - 4/29/08:

Obama threw Wright under the bus today. You just knew he would now that he is a real threat. He’s lying though - he knew what kind of man this guy was long before this got into the public eye this year. He has known it for two decades. And nothing Wright said yesterday is any worse than what he said earlier this year, yet Obama didn’t react then. Now it’s all politics.

He’s no better than Wright as far as I am concerned. But let’s see how this plays out. The media will no doubt say he has finally put it all behind him now, but frankly I don’t see the American people buying it. I’m beginning to think Hillary has a very real chance.