Just a theory…
Let us admit it, we here in America are probably the luckiest people on the planet. If you haven’t caught the news lately most of the developing world is in the middle of a massive food riot. We are in the middle of a recession, yes a recession I said it! Our domestic credit situation is so poor that most of us can’t finance a snickers bar. Fuel prices are out of control, causing food prices to skyrocket, and the American dollar is at its weakest point since the Great Depression. Though through all of these adversities we are still not killing each other over food or services. I have been keeping a close eye on the news coming out of other countries regarding the world’s economy and energy situation. I have a few “theories” that I would like to share. Mind you I am admitting right now I AM NOT AN EXPERT… The following is my opinion and what I personally believe to be going on. So please save the flames for the experts, what I am providing is what I see happening from what I read and the research I have done.
Here are few things that the media is not reporting as factors that have an impact on food prices around the world. First of all everyone seems to be focusing on the American “Corn to Fuel” subsidy as a main cause of the food shortage. What people do not realize is that “yes” we are a huge cause of the food shortage world wide but not because of what the media is reporting. Our farms have taken advantage of the “Corn to Ethanol” subsidy proposed by the current American administration. To put it simply the subsidy pays farmers more to grow corn/grain for ethanol than to grow food for export; capitalism! you have to love it. So we have much less grain to export which raises the cost of grain/corn around the world. This is a problem because as a country we have a very important position in the world… We are the grain basket for a large part of South America and other parts of the developing world. Why? Well we produce so much more food than we can eat that the world has become comfortable with the low cost grains we provide, and we are happy to get other countries dependent upon us for survival. Well now it has back fired, if we don’t supply South America with enough grain we pretty much give them a really good reason to cut down their rain forests and start expansive agricultural projects. Projects that could kill hundreds of millions of hectares of rain forest causing environmental damage on a global scale. That would not be good. As for not helping the rest of developing world we destroy even more of our global credibility and damn ourselves for letting the helpless die. We need smart alternatives to fossil fuels, and in that I would like to say this… Our government knew that ethanol fuel was not a smart fuel choice for mass consumption because we would literally have to ferment and distill the entire plant based bio-mass of America’s mid-west and anywhere else a corn crop could be grown to create enough ethanol to support just a few percent of our energy needs… We will go from importing fossil fuels to importing ethanol at what I am sure will be rates similar to what we pay today. Not to mention that we as a planet cannot grow enough bio-mass to support the worlds energy needs… Perhaps we should look the sky?
The fuel “shortage” that didn’t exist. I hate to tell you if you didn’t know, the current rise in fuel prices is completely industry manufactured. Yep no shortages no problems until recently in Africa where rebels (or the folks who really live there and receive nothing for all of the pollution and death they endure) attacked a pipeline and slowed production for a few days. The price climb in petrol is a manufactured move by energy companies to make huge profits before our elections. To be frank our current President George W. Bush has let energy companies run amuck with policy and he has handed them pretty much the world on a silver platter. They have been making record profits since he came into office. So here is my theory… These energy companies that are putting eco-friendly ads on our televisions and searching for our heart strings are gouging the living daylights out of the world market because their day in the sun with the current American administration is almost at its end. Why would this end? Well quite honestly without Pres. Bush’s influence, policy is going to change drastically. I hate to say it but, the situation that energy companies have enjoyed for the past eight years has effected the world in the most negative and criminal way. Do you think the war in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t boost energy company profits? It did, to the tune of billions of dollars. Do you think that the energy companies have not engineered both foreign and domestic price hikes to improve their profits? They have! If you compare their “service shut downs” of key refineries in relation to per barrel price drops on the open market you find an interesting trend where every time per barrel prices come down refinery production slows due to service and prices for refined fuels stay high. The energy companies that are showing us commercials of healthy forests, children playing, wind mills and clean geo-thermal energy are helping sustain and support an illegal war, domestic recession, and a global economic slow down.
I know that all of this sounds crazy but, I ask you to go to your media outlets (yes plural more than one opinion is a good thing) and check these things out. I think it is incredibly sad that
we have answers to these problems right in front of us but we are prisoners of corporations that despise us for our want to make the world a better place.
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