Posted by
Michael DeWeese on Friday, November 28, 2008 6:57:15 PM
In Our Dear Leader's address on 11-29-2008, he discusses farmers "who can tap new sources of energy".
Here we are, using corn for ethanol and soybeans for diesel.
These children don't really care that food is being used to make fuel for your car. Look at how happy they are to go without food so we can use food for fuel! In Haiti, they are making 'mud ' cookies to eat. Mixing fat with mud and leaving them in the sun to dry, then eating them. Just to keep something in their belly. So, during the holiday seasons, when your netroot buddies shout 'Bio-Fuel', remember these children and all the others like them. The caring, loving, save-the-planet Progressives aren't.
Not only do we use food crops for fuel, we subsidize farmers to NOT grow crops. To leave the land fallow even when we don't want the land to grow crops for food or fuel. If that land does not need to be fallow for crop rotation reasons or wet lands buffer, it should be growing crops and the subsidies still awarded if they send the crops harvested to help the famine areas of the world. I know the farm subsidy system is broken, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Of course, simply sending a starving man food is a short term solution. Help to set them up to farm their own crops and become self sufficient is the long term solution. Progressives want to help? They should study Agriculture and Animal Husbandry in college, not Marxism and hanging out at the local coffee shop complaining about how conservatives donate more to charity than they do. Then the Progressives can go to the schools in the countries that need help and teach something useful.
But back to the issue of food turned into fuel. If ALL of the corn grown in the U.S. where to be turned into ethanol, it would only supply 15% of the fuel needed for cars. If all of the soybeans grown in the U.S. where to be used for diesel, it would supply only 6% of the diesel needed. I don't think this amount of fuel actually qualifies as farmers "tapping a new source of energy".
Bio fuels are NOT the answer to the energy needs of the U.S. or the world. We need all farmland growing food for food. Of course, the scientists might be able to perfect a cellulose to ethanol process, then we can cut down all the plants that absorb CO2 to make fuel. That will certainly for definite sure solve that Global Warming thing.
We need a long term sustainable energy source for fuel that provides 100% of the fuel. At a cost that provides for economic growth, not recession. Until then, we drill for oil, everywhere the oil is, especially if it is in American territorry where we can drill free from terrorists and pirates.
No one is going to invest in building the infrastructure for a fuel source that will only provide a fuel for a small fraction of the vehicles we drive. The Government will forever have to oversee (bigger government), and subsidize (paid for by the government) any 'bio-fuel' manufacturing and delivery system with taxes.
http://www.cafepress.com/bdrep/5542922