If you read The Drudge Report like 100 million other Internet savages, you may have noticed some giant above-the-fold admonitions from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown about 24 hours ago:
- “Waste not want not, Gordon Brown tells families”
- Britain declares war on food waste
- As supermarket prices spiral Brown tells families: “Stop wasting food”
You see, there’s a global food crisis. (Yes, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!™)
In fact, planet-wide food shortages are supposed to be the biggest topic of discussion at this week’s G8 summit in Japan, where Brown is in attendance to scold his countrymen — from 6,000 miles away — about not wasting food.
So how did Gordo gear up for the big food crisis talks? With a six-course lunch and an eight-course dinner consisting of 18 different gourmet dishes. Naturally.
Here’s an accounting, fromThe Independent, of the two-meal dining spree fit for Marie Antoinette:
The global food shortage was not evident. As the champagne flowed, the couples enjoyed 18 “higher-quality ingredients”, beginning with amuse-bouche of corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin pain-surprise-style, hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs.
With translations helpfully provided by the hosts, the starter menu (second course) read like a meal in itself. A folding fan-modelled tray decorated with bamboo grasses carried eight delicacies: kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto beef shabu-shabu, with asparagus dressed with sesame cream; diced fatty flesh of tuna fish, with avocado and jellied soy sauce and the Japanese herb shiso; boiled clam, tomato and shiso in jellied clear soup of clam; water shield and pink conger dressed with a vinegary soy sauce; boiled prawn with jellied tosazu-vinegar; grilled eel rolled around burdock strip; sweet potato; and fried and seasoned goby with soy sauce and sugar.
That was followed by a hairy crab kegani bisque-style soup and salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with a vinegary water pepper sauce. The main course brought the “meat sweats” – poele of milk-fed lamb flavoured with aromatic herbs and mustard, as well as roasted lamb with black truffle and pine seed oil sauce. For the cheese course, the Japanese offered a special selection with lavender honey and caramelised nuts. It was followed by a “G8 fantasy dessert” and coffee served with candied fruits and vegetables.
This was washed down with Le Reve grand cru/La Seule Gloire champagne; a sake wine, Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo Nakadori; Corton-Charlemagne 2005 (France); Ridge California Monte Bello 1997 and Tokaji Esszencia 1999 (Hungary).
The G8 leaders had earlier made do with a “working lunch” of white asparagus and truffle soup; kegani crab; supreme of chicken; and cheese and coffee with petit fours. The lubrication of choice, for those drinking, was Chateau Grillet 2005.
The TV cameras were sadly not allowed to loiter long enough to discover whether Mr Brown practised what he preaches by not wasting any of his food.
Adding insult to proverbial injury, Glasgow’s Herald newspapers notes: “Surprisingly, perhaps, African leaders — including the heads of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Senegal — were not invited to the evening feast.”
I just can’t add anything more snide than that.
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The real irony here? It’s the environmentalists’ fault we have a food shortage in the first place. Their initiatives have kept farmland production at a damn near static level in most developed nations for decades, while we pay farmers NOT to grow crops. And what do we do with the crops we do get? Turn it into biofuels! Biofuels that are a net energy loser I might add. For those of you who may not understand what I’m talking about, that means that it costs more energy to create biofuels than you gain from burning them. Guess where that energy comes from? That’s right kids, coal and oil burning plants.
And why do we need all these biofuels in the first place? Because some dumbasses were afraid of upsetting the wildlife in a frozen hellhole (despite the fact that other pipelines actually caused major INCREASES in the wildlife population), and too afraid to mess up the ‘aesthetic beauty’ of our coastlines. Congratulations morons, gas is now 4 dollars a gallon nation-wide, people are starving all over the world, and the rising price of fuel is causing every product to get more expensive.
People wonder why the green movement has become a joke.
Another fun thing everybody forgot: African leaders shove themselves in this position. Zimbabwe was, a decade ago, the breadbasket of Africa. Now, due to the suicidal politics of Robert Mugabe, they are dependent of outside sources of food. The entire Sub-Saharan continent is plagued with ethnic wars and miss-management of resources. Regardless, It is the West who keep of funding the African inability to feed themselves. Kinda sounds like perpetual international welfare. White Guilt is such a sweet thing…
I don’t think I can add anything to Scott F’s and Toubrouk’s posts there except for a childish, Brown is a bit weenie.
Yes them pesky environmentalists raising those fuel prices with their hybrid cars and use of public transport. Dont they realise how much oil it takes to grease a bicycle wheel? And how dare they support African dictators who reappropiate farmlands from colonial settlers to redistribute to indiginous natives with no understanding of agriculture or irrigation and therefore unable to provide crops to feed their nation. And Goddam them environmentalists concerned with the ‘aesthetic beauty’ of our coastlines, I mean HOW DARE THEY! Its probably cause they’re lazy and just want to surf all the time! Dont they care about we are more interested in having our cars run cheaply so we can drive to each others houses and play covers of Dueling Banjos on each others porches? No! them there selfish evironmentalist are just interested in a place where they can raise their families, they are sooo just in this for themselves. I cant believe how selfish they are… stealing all the worlds food and single handly raising the price of oil. I bet they orchrestrated the whole invade Iraq thing right from the start! I bet they would make us all drive around in Flinstones cars if they could instead of me taking my 4×4 to go huntin’. Environmentailst just miss the point sooo bad them numbskulls!
Hmm can someone smell the liberal in the room.
I love when liberals try and slant African History to blame all of the troubles there on the White Devil. Sorry Bud, but the only people africa has to blame are the same dark skinned leaders who promised to return Africa to it former glory then proceeded to slaughter whatever tribe they hated for the next 60 years as soon as the UN troops left in the 50’s. Not to mention all the Trillions of dollars of aid that is pumped into the rotting corpse of Africa. Facts not rose colored glasses are what passes for reality in the real world. Nothing else is acceptable.
Aleric, you got it right. Not only I can smell the Liberalist fragrance of “White Guilt”, I also share your take on Africa. For the last 25 years, we are pumping money down this $h!thole (Pardon my french) without much results.
As far as our friendly “Green Lovers” goes, the barrel of crude at 145$ each will do more in a couple of years than decades of hippie protests.
I always love it how when someone disagrees with the liberal-environmental party line it automatically makes them a retarded hillbilly. Its awesome when someone like a “Jimbob Jones” says stuff like that. It always exposes them for the condescending elitist assholes they are.
That food all sounds really nasty. I don’t think I could eat any of that. :[
I’m all for doing my part where the environment is concerned, but sorry, a lower food cost is more important to me than a car that runs on corn. The US, and indeed, the West has no need to depend on the Middle East or Venezuela (home of Hugo the creep) for oil, and it shouldn’t. As for Africa, well, Aleric, I can’t really add much there.
The environmental movement has been taken over by the anti-capitalist socialists. It really is not so much about saving the earth as it is about weakening the economies of countries they see as evil. The global warming movement is based more on anti-consumerism then science.
As for Africa – The west can keep throwing money at Africa but it will do those who need it no real good until home grown despots like Mugabe are removed from power by the people of Africa.
And Brown is just another politician trying to save his arse while kissing others arses. The protesters sign sums it up nicely.
Heres a couple of links. One of them is even from the Liberal Bible. I hope Jimbob reads this before he goes off a huntin’. I wonder if’n he uses an electric 4×4.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/business/worldbusiness/30food.html
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=biofuels&id=18173&a=
Facts shmacts. Who needs ‘em? You can prove anything thats even remotely true with facts.
Haha Jimbob. That was an awesome comment to some inane statements that have literally nothing to do with the above story.
I never realised how many conspiracy theorists subscribed to this site. Everyone just throws out blame but yet no person suggests a way to improve world hunger and then blame…. the environmentalists? Really, are people really this retarded?
I dont have an answer for you but I’m not interested in passing the buck either.
And Patafarian, I cant really see anywhere in Bob’s comment where he even mentions biofuels. Can you? I think he is ridiculing the broad generalisations and stereotypes that environmentalist are to blame for the world’s hunger crisis.
Facts shmacts. Who needs them? Especially when they make you look foolish…
“Yes them pesky environmentalists raising those fuel prices with their hybrid cars and use of public transport.”
I read “food prices”. Yeah boy I feel foolish.
Besides what I read was a story about wasting food, and “As supermarket prices spiral”. Which would have everything to do with bio-fuels.
“Everyone just throws out blame but yet no person suggests a way to improve world hunger”
1. Stop farm subsidies immediately, no more paying for someone NOT producing food. Within 3 fiscal years our grain, corn, and soy production will increase more than 60%.
2. Repeal environmental laws prohibiting the building of new oil refineries – the ones we have are operating at 99-100% capacity year round, bottlenecking our oil supply on the production side.
3. Drill ANWAR, drill offshore, drill fucking anywhere. Put oil shale technology into full production, we have billions of barrels sitting in the Rocky Mountains, lets get at that shit ASAP.
4. Take the North Korea track with African leaders. Crooked government? No food for you. Killing rival tribes? No food for you. Taking your citizens farm land and starving your entire continent? Reallllllly no food for you.
5. Western nations must begin to use the same collectivist bargaining schemes OPEC has used to paralyze us for decades. We use most of the world’s oil, and if we simply refuse to buy above a certain price, it will bring them in line nearly overnight. If it doesn’t work, remember they all live in the desert, and are dependent on western crops, meats, and products. The only thing of value they produce in large quantities is oil, so we demand a modified oil for food program, no oil = no food. Lets see how long they hold out.
Now dumbass, there’s my plan. I could extrapolate military eventualities, but you get the point. I spent 6 years in Afghanistan and Iraq getting to understand their customs and culture, and let me tell you this is the ONLY way we’ll get out from under this oil and food crisis. The two pieces are inextricably linked, and we can use that to our advantage. Both sides have necessity products the other needs, and we have much larger reserves of oil than they do of food. They see us as weak and decadent – and they don’t think we have the balls to drop the hammer on them after Iraq. Cut off their food supply, show them we mean business, and watch the price of oil plummet.
Oh, and quit running your mouth about ‘facts’, what ‘facts’ did you bring to the table oh Genius of the Internet Realm? Cause it seems to me the people you’re calling morons are the ONLY ones who did bring indisputable facts to the table.
Nobody likes a sockpuppet. Please pick a name and stick with it, Jimbob/Joel.
Zing!
Toubrouk,
For future reference, it’s $145.
No offence – I’m a former English major (MA in it, as well) and I edit compulsively.
Everyone else: yes, so I’m off topic …
Oversneer, you can’t trademark WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE, can you?
But on a serious note, people want to blame the condition of the continent of Africa on the Africans, which is like saying Native Americans live on reservations because where else would they live? There are bigger issues at work than can be mentioned in a comment on a blog. For instance the lasting impact of real and genuine Western European imperialism, the raping of the continent by the West and the East of its people (yes, in some cases aided by the other inhabitants of the continent) and the continued “aid” of powers from the west (which it can be argued stunts the growth of the economies of African nations).
@ Scott F.
Here’s the thing, I hear drilling for oil in the shale is expensive and until the price of oil became so high it wouldn’t prove profitable. But isn’t the goal of drilling oil shale to reduce the price of oil? Explain that to me.
Now why such focus on African leaders? Taking the same tact with China over Tibet? Russia over Chechnya? Besides not exporting food into an African countries isn’t going to punish the leaders of said country. I mean Castro was still in charge of Cuba until very recently and Kim Jong Il is still in charge of North Korea and I’m sure he’s not starving. I don’t even see what that has to do with this topic.
But you think not exporting food is going to hurt OPEC? OPEC countries pay for the food they import, they’re not gifts. They can buy more since they’re making more from the high price of oil. What you’re basically saying by not exporting food, is you’re cutting off a source of income for your country and you’ll have no oil. Oil is everywhere, in terms of where it’s used. You ask who’ll last longer? They’ll adapt quicker to not buying food (from the West) than the West will to living without oil. You’re up in arms about the price of oil, I haven’t seen any stories about OPEC pissed off about the price of food.
Military eventualities? I actually would like you to expound on that.
“But on a serious note, people want to blame the condition of the continent of Africa on the Africans, which is like saying Native Americans live on reservations because where else would they live?”
Dude, we still live in and run America, the Europeans don’t still live in and rule Africa – there’s just no comparing those two issues. The real question is, why are you blaming white Europeans for something they did 50 – 100 years ago rather than the Africans themselves who are stealing food aid from the mouths of their own people and selling it for profit? Living in the past is a dangerous game, because you tend to never look to the future. And seriously, if you’re going to blame our aid for their problems, please, lets stop it immediately and start selling that food for profit – our economy could use it.
Oil shale is a net energy loser, but that can be supplemented for with nuclear, geothermal, coal, solar, whatever. Being a net loser isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, the reason biofuels suck is because it’s a net loser AND we’re wasting food.
What was the entire point of the argument? We’re having a ‘food crisis’. My point is that the crisis isn’t a single-dimension issue. It’s not just a lack of food, it’s the price of food and everything else. We pay farmers subsidies to not grow food so we keep the supply low enough for the price to remain high enough for them to make a profit. I say, if you’re going to pay them subsidies anyways, just have them grow the extra crops – yeah, they’ll make less because supply will expand, just use the same subsidies to make up the difference so they can make a profit. You’re still paying the farmers, they still make a profit, but we have more food at a lower price.
Problem? It doesn’t matter how much we lower the cost of food, if gas is 4-5 dollars a gallon because the transport margins get bigger and they have to pass the cost off to the consumer – and the food is still expensive. That’s where the oil problem comes in to effect.
If I was you, I would rethink the whole ‘they don’t need our food’ thing. Where else are they going to get it exactly? Most countries in the third world can barely (if that) feed their own people, let alone export anything. China? They’re limiting how many bags of rice you can buy at my local Walmart because of the shortage in Southeast Asia. It’s rough feeding more than a billion people when a large chunk of your country is uninhabitable mountains. The Russians? Does the word breadline mean anything to you? Besides, that’s where my military eventualities come in. There are benefits to having the world’s largest and most advanced Navies (mainly nuclear too, except for aircraft), like the ability to completely blockade a nation or even an entire region.
No, I wouldn’t apply these rules to Russia over Chechnya, or China over Tibet. Why? Because they don’t have the oil we want. I’m not tippy toeing around that fact. They (the Middle East) have something we need desperately, and are choking our economy by ramping the price up on it. I have no problem with us responding in kind with a product they need just as desperately. Why will it work here when it didn’t work in Cuba or North Korea? For one thing, their governments don’t have that kind of all controlling power to begin with. Also, they pretty much only produce oil. Our economies may depend on it, but it IS their economy. When you say they ‘pay for their food’ – yeah, but where do you think they get the money to buy it?
Bottom line – the food crisis and the oil crisis are linked too closely to unravel. No matter what you do to make food cheaper, or more abundant, it doesn’t matter if it still costs a fortune to transport it across countries or even oceans or continents.
I still don’t see how drilling everywhere would help with a food crisis, food prices or even gas prices for that matter. Right here, right now, supply is down and demand is up. Bad weather, bad crops, global warming, whatever. Drill the US from coast to coast and beyond, drill GW’s butt if you want to, but that will have NO EFFECT on gas prices in the short term. We do not have the infrastructure in these areas to get the oil to the refineries and “what’s that??” We don’t have the refineries to process it!! Drill, drill, drill, it won’t make a difference. All the oil under this continent wouldn’t be a drop in OPEC’s bucket. Maybe in about 10 years, it would have a negligible effect on gas prices, but guess what?? In another 30 or 40 years, all the oil everywhere will be gone. IT IS NOT A RENEWABLE RESOURCE!!!! So the typical Neocon Nutjob solution is drill, drill, drill it will solve all our problems. So simplistic and so very wrong, all at the same time. Drop the party line and put down the cool-aid.
Instead of wasting time and money on a short-term solution that will take 10 years to have any effect and then will only amount to a band-aid, why not think really long and hard about ending our dependence on oil now?? The “wacko” environmentalists and greeners have been saying that for years but now that greedy fat Americans are being hit in their wallets, they are going all Chicken Little. If the gas prices were cut in half next week, we all would be saying “thank god that’s over!” Typical. For the record I am an American, I am fat and I would be greedy if I had any money or investments, but I don’t. I just know I can’t afford enough gas or groceries to last from one payday to the next, and drilling is not going to solve MY problems or anyone else’s, except those who would make money off it.
Sorry Scott, I usually agree with your points, but this one stinks. Just my opinion.
I would also like to add that that menu is awful!! Maybe they all left hungry and were better able to empathize with the hungry?? Wankers, indeed.
Sorry for three in a row, I do have a high fever today… hehehe. Solutions instead of just blowing…what about sea farming, hydroponics, desalinization, horizontal farming (really, look it up) community gardening. Sorry, I don’t have any answers for Africa. Maybe if we, Americans that is, cared more about corruption, poverty, etc than we did about oil we could invade African countries, overthrow their leaders, bring them democracy and then they could be the Eden that Iraq is and prosper under our thumb like Iraq has.
Living in the past? I blame white Europeans for something they did 50 to 100 years ago because they did it 50 to 100 years ago. 50 years is crap, maybe two generations. Two generation to undo history that’s been happening since the 17th century? That’s the 1600s, so it’s actually what white Europeans did for 300 years, but 50 years to undo the ramifications of mass removal of indigenous peoples, conquering and subjugating cultures and haphazard division of land and people they knew nothing about. That sounds fair.
I’m not defending the majority of African leaders but people act like they’re doing something so different from the rest of the world. Iraqi Oil for Food, the junta in Burma (Myanmar) is supposedly taking aid meant for the hurricane victims there. But back on topic somewhat.
Oil prices are high, they’re going to stay high. They were trending this way. If not because of supply then because of inflation. Being reactionary and withholding food is not the answer. Food doesn’t keep like oil does. Food spoils. People grow food with the intent of making money on it. Suddenly not being able to sell it will produce an instant increase win supply which will drop prices significantly. And somebody will figure out a way to make money on that. You may just create an international food black market. These OPEC nations aren’t protest friendly democracies. People who take to the streets demanding food above what they’re rationed will probably have some patriotism beat into them. Besides which, the West will look as it always does, greedy. Let me break it down:
1. The West uses more than half the world’s supply of oil
2. Using their own favored system, the free market, the price of oil increases
3. In order to decrease the price, The West, which produces more food than it can consume, would rather let it waste than sell it to a nation that can’t produce the amount of food necessary to feed it’s growing population
Now you tell me if that doesn’t read like a recruitment pamphlet for anti-West extremism.
Where do you think the money they use to buy food goes? What happens when all the money disappears?
Reading your military eventualities, I think you want to start world war III over $5 / gallon gas. $5 / gallon gas is not something to go to war over or even start a blockade over. $5 – 10 / gallon gas is something to adapt to. I am not raising the spectre of $5 / gallon gas to the level of September 11th, which was a real and valid reason to kick some country’s ass. I’m all for drilling, not in oil shale, that seems useless, like wind farms or solar power.. Drill in ANWAR, drill off the coast. Stick with what works: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear.
And llama nothing proposed is going to fix anything short of ten years. It doesn’t hurt to drill.
Man oh man — some of you guys are writing way more on this site than I am.
You want a job around here? We don’t pay much, but you get to pontificate above the fold …
A job? Hey, if you wanna put up with the pitchfork wielding villagers I inevitably attract, more power to you. You might think about Molotov-cocktail proofing your servers first though.
“I think you want to start world war III over $5 / gallon gas. $5 / gallon gas is not something to go to war over or even start a blockade over.”
I don’t think you grasp just how badly this is going to effect the economy. Where do you live? If you’re like me, you live in the suburbs of a major city. I work on the other side of town, with a 45 minute drive to and from. Now in a perfect world, I would be able to get housing near my job – unfortunately American cities were designed and built when gas was cheap as hell. The financial center is usually downtown, you’ll have a large industrial area on one side, and since no one wants to live by factories, the houses are on the other side of town.
I’m financially ’stuck’ in my mortgage, I can’t just choose to up and move closer to my job. I can’t really switch jobs because all the companies that I am qualified to work for are located in the same area of town anyways – so I’d be driving to the same place no matter which one I work for. So I have no choice but to fill up my tank every week and put up with it. Employers aren’t willing to offer any effective kind of reimbursement for people who are now shelling out more than twice what they were just a few years ago.
A few million people in this situation, a few million people with that much less disposable income and purchasing power. Those people buy fewer things, companies make less profit, companies lay off employees, those employees now can’t afford things, and the economy sinks even lower. It’s a vicious cycle. We are the third largest nation in the world in size and population. We can’t just rethink our entire nation’s infrastructure overnight to suddenly ‘adapt’ to a world where gas is this expensive. Are we just going to pick up our financial districts and move them closer to the suburbs? Are we going to redistribute housing old-school USSR style?
What are you going to do to ‘adapt’ to all of your basic essentials going up in price? Those semis that bring your food to your local market from all over the world run on gas you know. If their fuel is super expensive, they’re not going to let their profits take a hit when they can just pass the hat down the line to the consumer.
The whole point of all my rants is that if you think we’ve got a problem with this ‘food crisis’ now – just wait until the climbing price of oil really starts catching up with us. Not only will we not have enough food, it’s going to be so expensive a lot of people simply won’t be able to afford it.
All these politicians who keep saying 10 years or more are probably thinking in terms of a government project – always late and over budget. We’re talking about corporations who have a profit incentive to get any new oil fields on-line ASAP. Now, there is no guarantee that there is actually any oil in the currently off-limits areas; they haven’t even been surveyed for oil.
One thing that really irks me is this attitude that since it won’t make a difference today or tomorrow there is no point in even doing it. Well, putting a child through school won’t make a difference for 13 years, going to college won’t do anything for you for at least 4 years, cutting our “greenhouse” emissions won’t make a difference for years – so why bother, it’s pointless, We’re All Doomed. Adnabit, this is the same effing country that put a man on the moon 10 years after it put its mind to it, the same country that came from behind to give a massive beat-down to the Axis in less than 4 years.
With nuclear power, geothermal, solar, wind, clean coal, and more oil, we can meet our energy needs NOW and develop the technologies needed to replace fossil fuels.
I am disturbed by the notion that people are “living in the past” because white Europeans haven’t been in charge in Africa in 50 years. Having Europeans leave didn’t suddenly make everything all better. Their countries were screwed, and you want to punish the majority because their leaders are oppressing their people?
And while South Africa is not in the region that was brought up, keep in mind that Apartheid ended less than 20 years ago, and they (like other countries there) are still struggling to bring up the black sectors to the same level as the white ones.
The United States has made a cottage industry of installing and removing people from positions of power, so why don’t we intervene in these African countries? Because there’s nothing in it for us.
By cutting off the food aid to Africa, you are not forcing the hand of anyone to stop being corrupt. If anything, that will contribute to the deaths of those very same people you seem hell-bent in blaming for their own problems. So before you go off on another blame-the-victim rant, come up with a better solution than just cutting food.
I’d say more, but I see this as pointless.
Ignorance is not cured by the rants of one person.
I will give you all one point–we are not going to solve this here. It is too complex an issue. However, I stand by my statement that drilling offshore or in ANWR or Colorado will do nothing to lower gas prices in the near future, and who know WHAT will happen 5 or 10 years from now. We might all have those flying cars that run on hot air by then and we will all be sitting pretty. We might long for the days of $4 gas.
Also, I still think that menu was mainly ICK!
And Scott, that is a bad spot you’re in. I had a 35 minute commute (usually saw NO traffic whatsoever) to a small town, the nearest one. When gas hit 3.99, I quit and went to work at home. I am lucky to have a vocation that lets me do that (medical transcription). I know not everyone can, but it has worked out well for me. We also garden and have chickens and all that jazz. I told hubby we need to stockpile, but he thinks I am paranoid. Maybe I am.
Yes gas being expensive is bad. If you want to look at your spiral, you’ll notice less people working, less people having money, less people needing gas, demand will reduce and the price should fall accordingly, shouldn’t it? But that’s cynical way to look at things and not what I want to have happen.
You said earlier that oil is part of our economy but it is theirs. The way you’re talking about it, you make it a keystone or our economy. You’re right this may be a national security issue but not in the we-need-more-oil way but in the we-gotta-get-away-from-oil way. And there will be horrible withdrawal much like any addict but in the end the economy will be the better for it. But I am still for drilling because we should get all the oil there is to be got because we’re not going to get off of oil anytime soon. I have a gas driven car and I’m not going to get rid of it until it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
I had to change the way I look at things too. I changed the way I drive, I changed how I drive, I changed why I drive. I drive to work everyday too, I don’t drive as far as you (25 minutes) but I know what it is to spend money on gas. But I don’t want more oil. I want to get out from under the thumb of oil. I want it done in 10 years so that in 20 years, I can complain about the high price of electricity since everyone is plugging in their cars at night.
Read this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426
As an American who works in agriculture, I’d say that ending farm subsidies is an oversimplified answer. I’d agree if anyone were willing to put a floor on grain prices in this country.
At any rate, it’s getting pretty tough to keep a farm or ranch afloat these days, especially due to rising fuel costs. And those of us who work the land certainly understand our place in the crisis of fuel and water and food, but what would you have us do? I agree with some of what’s been said, but I see this like welfare reform. Many farmers need subsidies to stay afloat, but then you’re generally not allowed to use a certain amount of land.
It’s true– you might as well produce if you’re getting paid. But it doesn’t seem smart to pull the rug out from under producers… not completely. There may not be an overwhelming amount of independents like me in the supply chain, but it’s not as if big agribusiness has stepped up to fix everything, either.