- mostly down
- PBR, BSBR, NOK (good effort Tim Seymour), BCS up strongly
, treats this subject exceedingly well. 18th century Britain was faced with resource limits because food and fuel (biomass) both came from the land. After 1780, coal came about which solved this limitation. Oil then followed.“I make this observation in order to point up the obvious stupidity of trying to respond to supposed contemporary oil shortages by resort to ethanol production, which takes energy production back on to the land (using for the most part more energy in its production than it actually makes) with immediate and serious impacts on food grain prices. The perversity of a policy that takes us right back into the energy versus food trap of eighteenth-century Britain is nothing short of shocking. How did this come about?”
“powerful agribusiness lobby which dominates the very undemocratic US Senate (where small rural states command 60 percent of the votes) and which has long been one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington (the high level of agricultural subsidies in the US have been one of the most contentious issues in WTO negotiations with the rest of the world). The subsequently utterly predictable rise in food grain prices was also good news for agribusiness even as New Yorkers suddenly found their bagels increasing in price by 50 per cent. The consequent exacerbation of world hunger is no joke.”
, by the way, is a sheer pleasure to read, unlike many of the recent crop of books on the financial crisis.
Felix qui nihil debet 