Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Is Malthus rising from the grave?

As you have no doubt noticed, the only substantial measure Congress is likely to pass in the near future to (ostensibly) reduce consumption of fossil fuels in the U.S. is to promote the manufacture of ethanol from corn for fuel -- a plan also enthusiastically embraced by the White House Occupant.

Well, let's not forget that corn is food. In fact, corn isn't just food, it's very nearly all food. Beef, pork and chicken are corn. So are eggs, butter, milk and cheese, and the sugar in soda, breakfast cereal, margarine, frying oil. There's corn meal in pizza and corn products in just about every processed and packaged food in the supermarket.

So what happens when we start turning food into fuel for our automobiles? The price of food goes up. Most of us merkins can afford it, but most of the world's people cannot. Petroleum is also a major input to the growing, processing and shipping of corn and corn products, and all food products for that matter, so we're seeing a double squeeze as oil prices will inevitably continue to rise. Add to that the worldwide depletion of top soil, water shortages, depletion of seafood resources, and continuing population growth, and food is just going to get more and more expensive.

It's happening very fast. In 10 years, we'll live in a different world. I'ts not just the era of cheap oil that's over, it's the era of cheap food. Or so it appears the way we're going.

The likely consequences, and what to do about it, will be another topic here in coming weeks. Meanwhile, for more background on this, the Worldwatch Institute is a good place to go. It won't hurt to eat less meat, and more veggies, grown locally and organically. But this is a vast, global structural problem that isn't going to be dented by voluntary action by a few people in developed countries.

Meanwhile, nix on the fuel ethanol movement.

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