From the Guardian: a confidential report from the World Bank reveals that biofuels have driven food prices up by as much as 75%. Not much of a surprise that this is happening - the global appetite for both food and energy are insatiable, and you just can’t put all of the strain of that demand on one set of resources! I am alarmed, though, by just how much of an impact biofuels have had on the global economy. Previous articles have focused on the role of speculators but lately that seem to be less of a satisfying explanation for the rapid rise in food prices. Focusing intensely on blaming the speculators, who do have a bit of influence on prices, distracts from the more serious issue: global food supply is simply not meeting demand.

The Guardian article suggests that the World Bank kept the impact of biofuels under wraps, so as not to embarrass the Bush administration. I definitely think that the issue must be brought to the forefront, as we push towards alternative sources of fuel. My presidential candidate of choice, Barack Obama, has actually been on the wrong side of this issue until recently. He’s since refined his stance, in the face of increasing evidence about the negative impact and efficiency of ethanol-based fuel, to try and come up with research and development focusing on using cellulosic waste by-products of corn-production (husks and manure) rather than diverting resources from the food supply. Frustratingly, I cannot find the source for this now, but I also recall reading an article in which Obama clarified his preference for corn ethanol vs. sugar, arguing that even though sugar is more efficient, we already have a massive infrastructure for growing corn in place and it makes more sense in the short term to use that, vs. starting a domestic sugar industry from scratch.

I don’t know if I can fully get behind this latest policy stance, even if the focus is on cellulosic biofuel production. For one thing, domestic cellulosic ethanol may not be a viable energy source for at least five more years with current rates of corn production and energy demand. Increasing corn production overall is likely to have negative impacts on the environment - corn crops are particularly nutrient greedy and prone to accelerating soil erosion, which is why they must be rotated with other crops.

Even given the alarming impact thus far of certain biofuels, however, I don’t think the solution is to throw out the baby with the bath water! The most immediate problem is to ease our dependence upon oil as a source of fuel. We must invest in research and development into alternative energies. Using the waste products of corn for ethanol isn’t a bad idea, just for the reasons mentioned above, I don’t think we should shape our energy policy to be entirely reliant upon that method as a primary source. We should give another look at sugar ethanol, which has been wildly successful in Brazil, and other sources such as algae or switchgrass. Right now, as far as energy goes, we’re really in a bind and have to act fast. The key is that we must be smart about it, and not frantically throw money and support towards a particular solution, simply because it is anything but oil!

***EDIT: This made for an alarmingly long comment, so I’ll just append it to the end of my post.

Hi Christian! President Bush doesn’t need The Guardian or any other “hyper-liberal” outfit to help embarrass himself; he’s doing a heckuva
job himself!

As for Senator Obama? I know it is a strange thought, but it is possible to offer both flowery rhetoric AND policy proposals. At the same time, even! You can read all about them in his Blueprint for Change but here are a few examples:

Plan to address the mortgage crisis: universal mortgage credit which would give tax relief to homeowners making less than $50k per year; clamp down on fraud and predatory practices by creating the first federal definition of fraud, increasing funding for enforcement of existing laws on both state and federal levels; closing loopholes which have heretofore been exploited by subprime mortgage companies (the culprits most responsible for our current economic crisis).

Plan to reign in government spending (which had been considered a Republican stance, before this administration at least!): reinstate a pay as you go system for the government, making sure that new spending is accounted for before pushing through a budget; reverse Bush’s tax cuts for the top 2% wealthiest Americans making over $250k a year so that we can all afford cool things like roads and schools; ensure competition for federal contracts over $25k so that companies have to compete to earn taxpayer money, instead of us forking over billions of dollars to Hallburton to burn.

There’s a lot more, but I assume you can read since you’re here! Obama does actually bring up these proposals in speeches, if you listen to them in their entirety and not just snippets of whatever is shown on the news.

As far as flip-flopping goes, the only substantive policy Obama has flipped on is his support of the FISA compromise, which is admittedly disappointing. But there’s a lot of hullabaloo about Obama supposedly flipping on troop withdrawal from Iraq, which is absolutely not the case. And he has changed his view of ethanol, as I’d said in my post, but in response to increasing evidence available about its environmental impacts. I’ll take intelligent pragmatism and flexibility over stubborn, blind consistency.

And if you want to talk about flip-flops, perhaps Sen. McCain is not the candidate to support! Unlike Obama, McCain has flipped on Iraq.
As well as the Bush tax cuts, immigration reform, and most dishearteningly, torture. These flops don’t appear to be born out of any new evidence or insights, or anything beyond political expediency. In addition to these flops, McCain has as his brain trust people like Phil Gramm, lobbyist and former legislator who had helped push for the deregulation of the mortgage industry that led us to this current crisis, and who thinks people who are suffering as a result of these disastrous policies are whiners. And then there’s Carly Fiorina, whose only expertise is that she ran Hewlett Packard into the ground. Smashing team if your priority is the ailing economy these days.

I actually rather liked McCain back in 2000. He seemed sensible back then and not particularly beholden to special interests or party lines. But this is 2008, times (and people) have changed, and I’m for Obama.

As I mentioned before, I am a big fan of public radio (as well as everything on that Stuff White People Like list. Where do I return my Asian card?). One of my favorite episodes of Radio Lab is Space. I’d forgotten just how unbelievably amazing space was, since having pored over my sister’s astronomy textbooks when I was little. I love the opening of the episode - what happens is that a woman points a laser at a star. Sounds simple enough, right? In typical Radio Lab fashion, the hosts’ discussion opens up new ways of looking at things, kind of like peeling the layers of an onion. The way Jad Abumrad, one of the hosts, describes it is that woman actually touches the star with her laser pointer, and it is the coolest thing that Jad has ever witnessed. Radio Lab offers a child’s view of the world, in that it hasn’t lost its sense of wonder; the discussions are grounded in reality but not at all flattened by cynicism.

But the best part of the episode is Annie Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan. She tells the story of how they married - they were working together on the Voyager Golden Record, essentially a message in a bottle from all of humanity, directed to whoever may be listening. They had known each other for ten years, never having shared a kiss or indicated feelings for the other. The two found themselves so wrapped up in the wonder and beauty of what they were doing, that they made the impulsive decision to get married. And stayed that way, until Sagan’s death in 1996. Here is his dedication to Druyan at the beginning of Cosmos, his most famous novel:

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time,
it is my joy to share
a planet and an epoch with Annie.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most romantic modern stories I’ve ever heard. Forget Casablanca, forget Romeo and Juliet, let’s have movies and write books about Carl and Annie! The real star-crossed lovers.

Since hearing that episode, I’ve become slightly obsessed with Druyan, her sense of wonder and her uplifting, marvelous voice. I found an article she had written in 2003, for Skeptical Inquirer. She covers many topics but the main theme is questioning religion’s dominance over spirituality. Druyan questions why science, the pursuit of knowledge, doesn’t stir people’s souls - why doesn’t the rest of the world at large share her sense of wonder at the universe? Why is optimism automatically associated with faith, and why can’t skeptics have hope?

This is something that I think we have to come to grips with. There’s a confusion generally in our society. There is a great wall that separates what we know from what we feel.

I am pretty much agnostic when it comes to religion. I don’t know if there is a God (or Goddesses, for that matter), and I don’t know if we can ever know that anyways, as the point of religion is faith - believing without evidence. I also can’t say I find any of the mainstream religions particularly inspiring, given their histories of discrimination and violence. And scientific institutions haven’t exactly been angelic, either. Research can lead to things like cures for cancer, sure, but it can also lead to the atomic bomb. Biochemical weapons. Land mines (are there any purpose for land mines, by the way, beyond maiming innocent people?).

In the end, however, I do feel strongly the idea that knowledge is far more inspirational and preferable to the lack thereof. I agree with Druyan that the Garden of Eden, described as paradise, doesn’t sound particularly ideal to me. Would I rather live forever, only dully aware of the static world I inhabit? Or would I risk the unknown and eat the apple? In a heartbeat I would choose the apple, and I think it lovely that the great pioneers of science have done so.