Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

The Biofuels Scam, Food Shortages and the Coming Collapse of the Human 
Population
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 by: Mike Adams
http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html

(NaturalNews) It was one of the dumbest "green" ideas ever proposed: Convert 
millions of acres of cropland into fields for growing ethanol from corn, then 
burn fossil fuels to harvest the ethanol, expending more energy to extract 
the fuel than you get from the fuel itself! Meanwhile, sit back and proclaim 
you've achieved a monumental green victory (President Bush, anyone?) all 
while unleashing a dangerous spike in global food prices that's causing a 
ripple effect of food shortages and rationing around the world.

I think politicians need to spend less time bragging about their latest 
greenwashing schemes and more time studying The Law of Unintended 
Consequences. Because while growing fuel on cropland initially sounds like a 
great idea, any honest assessment of the total impact leads you to the 
inescapable conclusion that biofuels are largely a government-sponsored scam. 
With a few exceptions (see below), biofuels produce no net increase in energy 
output, and they cause food shortages while creating strong economic 
incentives for the destruction of the very rainforests we desperately need to 
stabilize the climate!

And now we're just starting to see the early signs of the economic and social 
insanity that has been unleashed by this foolish pursuit of biofuels around 
the world: Food rationing in Sam's Club stores in the U.S., rapidly-rising 
prices on bread, rice and corn, and price spikes at cafeterias and 
restaurants that depend on these staple ingredients. The price of rice has 
tripled globally, unleashing riots in Haiti and Bangladesh, and the United 
Nations has issued warnings that millions of people around the world now face 
starvation because they can't afford to buy food. Americans are even starting 
to hoard food once again, after years of avoiding basic preparedness 
measures. (One benefit to all this, however, is that farmers are actually 
getting paid decent prices for their crops now, after years of operating on 
the verge of bankruptcy...)

Most biofuel efforts are a sham
Not all of these price spikes are due to the conversion of croplands to 
biofuel fields, but much of it is. As a result, it's suddenly becoming 
obvious to nearly everyone that the pursuit of biofuels, as currently 
structured, is a grand greenwashing hoax. It doesn't produce more fuel than 
it consumes, and it drives up food prices to boot!

Now, there are biofuels programs that really do work. The growing and 
harvesting of sugar cane in Brazil, for example, provides an 8-to-1 return on 
energy investment. But even that pursuit is tarnished by claims of unsafe 
work environments and massive environmental pollution (the sugar cane fields 
are burned before being harvested, a process that releases massive amounts of 
CO2 into the environment).

The only truly promising biofuels technology available today is based on 
microalgae. Feed CO2 to a vat of algae, and you can produce biofuels cheaply 
and responsibly, without destroying the environment. But these programs are 
only in experimental phases. Nobody is producing biofuels on a large scale 
from algae farms (not yet, anyway).

And that leaves the great American breadbasket: The corn and wheat fields. It 
is here that food is now being displaced by crops grown for biofuel 
processing. So where a farmer used to grow corn as a food source, he's now 
growing it to sell to a biofuel processing facility which turns the corn into 
ethanol. Obviously, the laws of economics come into play here, meaning that 
every bushel of corn used for biofuels production means one less bushel of 
corn available for food. Factor in the laws of supply and demand, and you can 
see that the more crops we use for biofuels, the higher the prices will rise 
for food.

Politicians, it seems, have no understanding of economics. They need to study 
the basics as they are presented in Henry Hazlitt's Book, Economics in One 
Lesson, which is a Libertarian-oriented guide that explains basic economics 
to anyone willing to learn. Economics is focused on the study of human 
behavior, or more precisely, consumer choice. Now, it seems, consumers are 
about to be faced with a choice they never wanted to have to make: Should I 
buy fuel, or food?

In other words: Do I want to drive my car, or do I want to eat?

You can have fuel or food, but not both
Under a biofuels-focused agricultural policy, the same limited resources 
(soil, sunlight and water, essentially) can be used for only one thing at a 
time. You can't use the corn twice, obviously (you can't eat the corn and 
process it for biofuels at the same time), so you've got to make a choice: 
Will you grow the corn for fuel, or for food?

The more you grow for fuel, of course, the less food you have, and that 
drives up food prices. But if you swing back the other way and grow more corn 
for food to ease food prices, the fuel prices go up. Trying to solve both 
problems at once is a bit like trying to pick up a wet watermelon seed with 
your fingers: It keeps slipping to the side.

One thing that has become abundantly clear in all this is that the era of 
cheap food and cheap fuel is over. I've written about this on NaturalNews, 
where I use the term "food bubble" to describe the most recent era of cheap 
food. As it turns out, cheap food is only made possible by cheap oil, and 
with oil now approaching $120 a barrel (a price that virtually no one thought 
possible just two years ago), food prices are simultaneously skyrocketing. 
(Modern farming practices use a lot of fossil fuel. So does transporting food 
across the country or around the world. Eat local, folks!)

Add to this the fact that global climate change is already underway, altering 
weather patterns and creating floods, droughts and other agricultural 
calamities, and you start to get the picture of just how bad things might 
get. That's not even to mention the very serious problem of collapsing 
honeybee populations due to a mysterious condition called colony collapse 
disorder that's devastating honeybee populations across North America right 
this minute. Honeybees, in case you didn't know, pollinate plants that 
represent about 30% of all the calories consumed by Americans. That's about 
one out of every three bites of your dinner, and it all depends on the "free" 
work performed by honeybees -- bees who are apparently going on strike by 
refusing to keep working for us.

Prepare for mass global starvation
So, to repeat, the food bubble is now starting to implode. What does it all 
mean? It means that as these economic and climate realities unfold, our world 
is facing massive starvation and food shortages. The first place this will be 
felt is in poor developing nations. It is there that people live on the edge 
of economic livelihood, where even a 20% rise in the price of basic food 
staples can put desperately-needed calories out of reach of tens of millions 
of families. If something is not done to rescue these people from their 
plight, they will starve to death.

Wealthy nations like America, Canada, the U.K., and others will be able to 
absorb the price increases, so you won't see mass starvation in North America 
any time soon (unless, of course, all the honeybees die, in which case 
prepare to start chewing your shoelaces...), but it will lead to significant 
increases in the cost of living, annoying consumers and reducing the amount 
of money available for other purchases (like vacations, cars, fuel, etc.). 
That, of course, will put downward pressure on the national economy.

But what we're seeing right now, folks, is just a small foreshadowing of 
events to come in the next couple of decades. Think about it: If these minor 
climate changes and foolish biofuels policies are already unleashing alarming 
rises in food prices, just imagine what we'll see when Peak Oil kicks in and 
global oil supplies really start to dwindle. When gasoline is $10 a gallon in 
the U.S., how expensive will food be around the world? The answer, of course, 
is that it will be triple or quadruple the current price. And that means many 
more people will starve.

Fossil fuels, of course, aren't the only limiting factor threatening future 
food supplies on our planet: There's also fossil water. That's water from 
underground aquifers that's being pumped up to the surface to water crops, 
then it's lost to evaporation. Countries like India and China are depending 
heavily on fossil water to irrigate their crops, and not surprisingly, the 
water levels in those aquifers is dropping steadily. In a few more years (as 
little as five years in some cases), that water will simply run dry, and the 
crops that were once irrigated to feed a nation will dry up and turn to dust. 
Mass starvation will only take a few months to kick in. Think North Korea 
after a season of floods. Perhaps 95% of humanity is just one crop season 
away from mass starvation.

The carrying capacity of planet Earth has reached its apex
The truth about all this, folks, is that the resources on our planet can only 
support a limited population, and I think we've over-populated the planet to 
a point where we're wiping out non-renewable resources at an alarming rate. 
This means a population correction is due. When there are too many people 
consuming too much food, using up too much water and burning too much oil, 
you can get away with a rapid expansion for a little while (a few decades, 
perhaps), but eventually reality kicks in and there's a global population 
correction that brings the population size back down to levels that can be 
sustained on the planet.

It's not a pretty picture. We're talking about the loss of a billion human 
lives, perhaps more. This is what's coming. It's as predictable as the laws 
of gravity. When you over-populate a planet and use up all the resources, the 
population eventually finds itself in a resource panic, and mass death 
ensues. You can observe the same thing with colonies of bacteria on a 
nutrient-rich petri dish: They will expand at an accelerating rate, 
multiplying their numbers until there's no more food left in the petri dish, 
and then they will experience a massive die-off. You might say that human 
beings are smarter than bacteria, and that's true, but as current events are 
clearly demonstrating, they're not much wiser! They still doom themselves to 
the same stupid fate by refusing to look at the long-term implications of 
their actions.

Humans are really good at making babies and eating food, but they're terrible 
at thinking even ten years ahead about the implications of their present-day 
decisions. That's why the global population control masterminds call people 
"feeders and breeders," by the way. Those are the two things human beings do 
extremely well: Fornicate and clean their plate. (Not necessarily in that 
order, though...)

The economies of our world have, sadly, been based on economic models that 
strongly encourage this kind of consumption and growth. We live in a 
"throwaway economy," where people are encouraged to consume and expend as 
much as possible. No corporation makes money teaching people how to use less. 
And so we've pushed for aggressive expansion since about the 1950's: Build 
more, eat more, consume more. We've turned farm lands into housing tracts, 
and rainforests into biofuel fields. We've over-fished the oceans, 
over-farmed the soils and over-extended ourselves to the point where a 
population correction is inevitable. We, the human race, have painted 
ourselves into a desperate corner, and the simple fact of the matter is that 
unless we quickly discover some new energy technology that provides the world 
with cheap, plentiful energy, we are headed straight towards a global 
population implosion that will leave a billion or more people dead.

And biofuels, of course, are no answer for this problem. You cannot grow 
enough corn to solve the problems of an expansionist, imperialistic race of 
beings (that's us humans) who have taken over the planet like a cancer tumor, 
wiped out countless species, destroyed huge swaths of natural rainforests, 
poisoned the oceans and rivers, polluted the skies and, at every opportunity, 
betrayed the very Earth that has given us a home in the first place. Humans 
can betray Mother Nature for a while, but in the end, we will pay a dear 
price for our own arrogance, greed and lack of vision. The human race is 
being sent back to kindergarten, where it needs to learn some basic lessons 
about living in harmony with the planet. Lessons like: Don't use up all the 
resources in a few generations. Don't think you're smarter than nature. And 
never forget how much Mother Nature does for us all for free! (Like 
pollinating the crops, producing oxygen, cleaning the air, water, etc. Read 
the book Mycelium Running to learn more...)

In time, we will either learn these lessons, or we will perish. It's really 
as simple as that. And all these suddenly-popular "save the planet" efforts 
we've seen by corporations recently are just a joke. We can't save the 
planet. The planet will be fine after we're gone, folks. What we're trying to 
save here is human civilization. The very idea that we think we can "save the 
planet" is arrogant all by itself. All we can do is respect the planet and 
find ways to live with it as polite guests living on a generous host.

Whether humans survive the next hundred years or not, planet Earth certainly 
will. And frankly, the planet will do much better without us. With humans 
gone, the Earth would quickly be restored to a vibrant, pristine state, full 
of life and abundance. The Earth doesn't need us, folks. But we, of course, 
certainly need the Earth. The real question is this: Can we learn to play 
nice and treat the Earth with respect? If not, we won't be around much longer 
to worry about it.

Nature needs to be granted legal standing
One final thought: I am an advocate of the idea that Mother Nature needs to 
be granted legal standing. I believe that humans do not automatically "own" 
nature, and that we cannot simply cut down forests, bulldoze mountainsides, 
fish the oceans, build dams and engage in other highly disruptive activities 
without first getting permission and paying royalties to a global Mother 
Nature Authority that stands up for the rights of the planet. Nature is not 
ours to own or destroy. We, as the guests on this planet, have no right to 
simply assume ownership over other living systems on this planet and exploit 
them for our own financial gain. The "destroy and consume" model of free 
market enterprise is simply not sustainable, folks. It does not lead us to a 
happy future; it leads to our own destruction.

Or, put another way, over the last hundred years or so, mankind has committed 
countless acts of violence against nature. It has pursued a policy of 
committing atrocities against Mother Nature -- a kind of genocide against 
anything non-human (animals, plants, fish, etc.). Humans have proven 
themselves to be, by far, the most violent and destructive life forms to ever 
exist on this planet. And yet paired with that violence, humans are an infant 
species, with little or no foresight, with virtually no ability to see the 
future implications of their own actions. We are, in a sense, the dumbest 
intelligent creatures ever to walk the face of this Earth.

We can land a man on the moon, but we can't even prevent our own rainforests 
from being clear-cut by soybean farmers and cattle ranchers. We can develop 
high-tech medicines, but we can't even openly recognize the more powerful 
medicines found in a simple dandelion plant. We can create amazing computers 
and televisions and internet technologies the beam information across the 
globe at the speed of light, but we pollute those information pathways with 
corporate ads for useless stuff and dangerous medicines that only make our 
fellow humans beings less enlightened. We are capable of so much, and yet we 
have accomplished so little. We are, by any honest assessment, a race of 
little children, running around the planet with far too much power and not 
nearly enough maturity. We're like a band of infants with flamethrowers.

Frankly, we don't deserve this planet, and Mother Nature is about to take it 
away from us. It's time for us to either grow up, or perish. And all these 
people who say "we have to protect the economy, not the environment" should 
probably just be rounded up and shipped off to Mars where they can play with 
the Martian dust all they want until they finally get the picture.

###

About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a mission to 
teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and 
has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, 
reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and 
improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent 
journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he 
writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a 
maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He 
also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called 
BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer 
advocacy programs. He's also the CEO of a highly successful email newsletter 
software company that develops software used to send permission email 
campaigns to subscribers. Adams is currently the executive director of the 
Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit, and enjoys outdoor 
activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics. Known on the 
'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and 
personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org