Food Riots
Apr
14
Ethanol: Our Energy Policy Helps Launch Worldwide Food Riots
Pete Davis
It's not often that a U.S. domestic policy change causes worldwide food riots, but that's what our ethanol subsidies have done according to a World Bank analysis. On December 19, 2007, President Bush signed H.R.6 into law with a five-fold increase in the mandated use of ethanol in gasoline. That stood on top of another large ethanol mandate in another H.R.6, enacted on August 8, 2005. Corn prices have jumped from $2/bushel in 2005 to $4/bushel last year, and they've just crested $6/bushel. In 2005, 6% of U.S. corn production went to ethanol; now its up to 23%. Only now are we beginning to realize that we're not achieving any overall energy efficiency with our heavy ethanol subsidies and mandates, we're just helping U.S. corn growers and starving the world's poor.

Recent comments
5 hours 38 min ago
5 hours 59 min ago
8 hours 45 min ago
8 hours 48 min ago
14 hours 34 min ago
16 hours 43 min ago
16 hours 59 min ago
17 hours 2 min ago
1 day 39 min ago
1 day 6 hours ago