Domestically produced corn based ethanol has enjoyed preferential federal treatment for years including a $0.51 per gallon tax credit and tariffs that discourage potentially cheaper sugar cane-based ethanol from Brazil. Federal government government support for ethanol has only increased in recent years with the first ever renewable fuel mandate for gasoline in 2005 and the significant raise of the mandate in 2007. Few in Washington predicted the costs of this government interference in the energy market, but now they are beginning to be widely accepted. Heritage scholars Ben Lieberman and …
Food riots have forced the collapse of the government in Haiti. People are dying in food lines in Egypt. The U.N. warns that food stocks for 450,000 Cambodian children is set to tun out in 30 days. Rising hunger is contributing to instability in Afghanistan. In India, even the gods are going hungry. After more than 30 years of declining hunger, suddenly, this year soaring commodity prices are causing hunger worldwide. The poor are are suffering the most. Some are blaming the food crisis on droughts in Australia and growing …
On April 10, 2008 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) destroyed over 30 years of U.S. leadership on free trade by gutting Trade Promotion Authority to kill the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. With riots breaking out all over the world due to high food prices (in part caused by Democrat ethanol mandates) George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen explains how trade could help alleviate hunger: Rising food prices mean hunger for millions and also political unrest, as has already been seen in Haiti, Egypt and Ivory Coast. Yes, more expensive energy …
The Environmental Defense Fund this week released a “study” purporting to show that instituting a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions in the United States would have virtually no economic impact. These claims would be laughably false if policies previously adopted at the behest of the environmental movement were not already contributing to the starvation of millions worldwide. Biofuel mandates and hunger According to the World Food Program, more than 100 million people are being driven into poverty by a “silent tsunami” of sharply rising food prices. The hungry are rioting in …
