Sunday, May 11, 2008
Corn as fuel is immoral! People are starving, Dammit!
I’ve been feeling this for a long time. I see food prices going way up. A lot of people are really struggling to cope with increased prices for bread, milk and cereals. Some of the increases are due to poor crops; a very small part is due to increased haulage costs. A very large part is because so much corn is being used for the production of ethanol for cars.
Why are we using food to produce fuel for cars? To limit the amount of oil used. Only it isn’t working to lower the price of oil, is it? All it is doing is taking food out of people’s mouths!
Boston has a very nice chain of Tortilla restaurants called Boloco. Great food and great smoothies, as I found out when I tried one this week. They obviously think they will impress people who are environmentally conscious by printing in large letters on their plastic smoothie cups that the cups are 100% made from corn. Well, I’m environmentally aware and I was not in the slightest bit impressed! More food out of people’s mouths, as far as I’m concerned!
The United States of America uses over a quarter of the world’s oil. It has 37% of the world’s cars. So much of this country is based upon use of the automobile. Wave after wave of people have moved into suburbia, but many of the places they have moved to have little or no public transportation. The big car companies made sure of that. And the big car companies are the reason why Americans pay considerably less in gasoline tax than any net oil using country in the world.
While Americans are complaining about $4 gasoline, Europeans are paying more than twice that. Of course, there would be big trouble if European style taxes were introduced over here. But there are predictions that the spike in oil prices is going to continue until it hits $200 a barrel. This will see another $2 added to the price of gasoline here, and more elsewhere, where VAT is added to the price. It actually doesn’t make too much difference how much Europeans cut back their usage if China continues to use more and American usage doesn’t dip significantly. The oil price will continue to rise for as long as Americans are so dependent on it.
How to wean them off? Well the answer sure as hell shouldn’t be using corn and sugar cane! In the short term, it might actually be necessary for suburbanites to telecommute one day a week or be offered the option of working 4 long days. And many new bus routes need to be created in conjunction with new road usage charges and perhaps banning single occupant vehicles from commuting routes at peak times where public transportation alternatives are viable. And yes, increasing the gasoline tax! For the longer term, I have to suggest trains! Light rail for short journeys and high speed for longer ones that will also reduce demand for air travel. Would you fly from Washington DC to Boston if a train could do the journey in 2 ½ to 3 hours? Would you drive?
I saw the McCain and Clinton calls for temporarily halting the tax for the summer as reckless, populist electioneering. Yes, it would make things easier for Americans for the month it takes for the price of oil to go up the next $10 a barrel, at which point it will make no difference except for the shortfall in tax revenue. Yet another debt our grandchildren will be paying because we spend more than we earn.
By the logic that Americans will only significantly reduce their usage when the price of gas is $6 a gallon – click on the hyperlink below - the price of oil will need to reach $200 per barrel, at which point Europeans would be paying upwards of $12. So here is an idea that will never come to fruition. If the USA phased in a $2 per gallon Federal Excise Duty on gasoline, the price level would reach that at which usage would decline significantly, and nobody in other developed nations need feel much more pain than they already are. And it would make the prices here more environmentally responsible. No chance of that happening, unfortunately, but it should!
As for the alternative mentioned here to use Natural Gas resources; as long as we don’t spoil nature reserves or otherwise damage ecology, I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen. But it should be secondary to finding alternatives that are non-polluting and renewable and should not stop efforts to make automobile travel an alternative instead of the only means of transport for millions of Americans.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/07/news/economy/120_oil/index.htm?postversion=2008050812
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Why are we using food to produce fuel for cars? To limit the amount of oil used. Only it isn’t working to lower the price of oil, is it? All it is doing is taking food out of people’s mouths!
Boston has a very nice chain of Tortilla restaurants called Boloco. Great food and great smoothies, as I found out when I tried one this week. They obviously think they will impress people who are environmentally conscious by printing in large letters on their plastic smoothie cups that the cups are 100% made from corn. Well, I’m environmentally aware and I was not in the slightest bit impressed! More food out of people’s mouths, as far as I’m concerned!
The United States of America uses over a quarter of the world’s oil. It has 37% of the world’s cars. So much of this country is based upon use of the automobile. Wave after wave of people have moved into suburbia, but many of the places they have moved to have little or no public transportation. The big car companies made sure of that. And the big car companies are the reason why Americans pay considerably less in gasoline tax than any net oil using country in the world.
While Americans are complaining about $4 gasoline, Europeans are paying more than twice that. Of course, there would be big trouble if European style taxes were introduced over here. But there are predictions that the spike in oil prices is going to continue until it hits $200 a barrel. This will see another $2 added to the price of gasoline here, and more elsewhere, where VAT is added to the price. It actually doesn’t make too much difference how much Europeans cut back their usage if China continues to use more and American usage doesn’t dip significantly. The oil price will continue to rise for as long as Americans are so dependent on it.
How to wean them off? Well the answer sure as hell shouldn’t be using corn and sugar cane! In the short term, it might actually be necessary for suburbanites to telecommute one day a week or be offered the option of working 4 long days. And many new bus routes need to be created in conjunction with new road usage charges and perhaps banning single occupant vehicles from commuting routes at peak times where public transportation alternatives are viable. And yes, increasing the gasoline tax! For the longer term, I have to suggest trains! Light rail for short journeys and high speed for longer ones that will also reduce demand for air travel. Would you fly from Washington DC to Boston if a train could do the journey in 2 ½ to 3 hours? Would you drive?
I saw the McCain and Clinton calls for temporarily halting the tax for the summer as reckless, populist electioneering. Yes, it would make things easier for Americans for the month it takes for the price of oil to go up the next $10 a barrel, at which point it will make no difference except for the shortfall in tax revenue. Yet another debt our grandchildren will be paying because we spend more than we earn.
By the logic that Americans will only significantly reduce their usage when the price of gas is $6 a gallon – click on the hyperlink below - the price of oil will need to reach $200 per barrel, at which point Europeans would be paying upwards of $12. So here is an idea that will never come to fruition. If the USA phased in a $2 per gallon Federal Excise Duty on gasoline, the price level would reach that at which usage would decline significantly, and nobody in other developed nations need feel much more pain than they already are. And it would make the prices here more environmentally responsible. No chance of that happening, unfortunately, but it should!
As for the alternative mentioned here to use Natural Gas resources; as long as we don’t spoil nature reserves or otherwise damage ecology, I don’t see why that shouldn’t happen. But it should be secondary to finding alternatives that are non-polluting and renewable and should not stop efforts to make automobile travel an alternative instead of the only means of transport for millions of Americans.
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/07/news/economy/120_oil/index.htm?postversion=2008050812
