IMF says 100 million are close to starving due to high food prices, rising in a large part due to ethanol production converting food into fuel. Also, the IMF seems to have accepted peak oil. Are Christians allowed to care about this yet?

Careful Dave,

You know what happened to all our other cl… ch… topics.

BIG brother is watching!!

Nice to see your name up on the boards again.

Dave Lankshear - 14 April 2008 09:20 PM

IMF says 100 million are close to starving due to high food prices, rising in a large part due to ethanol production converting food into fuel. Also, the IMF seems to have accepted peak oil. Are Christians allowed to care about this yet?

Who is stopping you from caring about it?

Hi Dave,

IMF says 100 million are close to starving due to high food prices, rising in a large part due to ethanol production converting food into fuel.

Surely this statement’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it? According to an article in today’s SMH:

The increases are the result of growing demand in nations such as China and India. Another factor may be the diversion of crops to biofuels, though the effects of using foods like corn to produce ethanol are disputed. High energy prices, which encourage biofuel production, also raise the cost of fertilizers and food transportation. Bad weather, including a drought in Australia, has contributed.

From The Age today:

Anger over food prices led to last week’s riots in Haiti, in which at least five people were killed and the country’s prime minister was ousted.

Developing countries claim that rich countries, in their rush to tackle global warming, are helping to drive up food prices by encouraging the use of crops to produce biofuels rather than to feed people. Most of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to biofuels in the United States.

According to the 2008 World Development Report, more than 240 kilograms of corn — enough to feed one person for a year — is required to produce 100 litres of ethanol, enough to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle.

I’m afraid this is symptomatic of current hysteria over climate change. These kinds of disconnects are going to appear all over the place in coming years, and the people who will be hurt the most will be the poorest and most disadvantaged. (even though good for Australian farmers who are due for some relief).

Hmmm
As far as I can tell Peak Oil is a reality. Whether or not it’s right now or will happen in 50 years, both time frames are too small and the global impact will be devastating.
But re oil for bio fuels… I think this is a prob right now. Parts of Indonesia are being ecologically devastated esp Kalimantan. I remember studying Kalimantan when I did Indonesian at school. We were shown how it was a big lump of bush with a few strips of cleared area for people to live in around the edges. Now the bush land has receded into a strip, a divided strip in the centre. Much of this degradation has happened for either wood harvest or clearing for palm oil plantations. The results are disgusting. The deforestation is a death knell for the orangutan population. The indigenous people are being hunted down and Kalimantan is now subject to massive scale fires.
Whether you want to be upset about deforestation, peak oil or orangutans, or the indigenous peoples, or climate change or whatever, we will be judged on our stewardship of this planet.
We are gonna get really low marks cos we just didn’t care enough.

Yeah, I feel pretty sure now that biofuels is a dead-end…

Those who are concerned about poverty and famine, please consider sponsoring some children through Compassion. That is a *practical* was to make a real difference…

Agreed Craig, Compassion is a great group and we’ve usually had 2 kids for the last 20 years, but over the last year “diversified” our giving when Compassion sadly lost confidence in one project. (I hate it when that happens!)

Another good side effect if you sponsor a girl: for every 3 years a woman is educated, that’s one less child they will have in their lifetime. (UN statistics). I’m not against some families having big families, but by the most important benchmarks the earth is “full”. Compassion brings practical help to a whole community — not just the individual child, the gospel, AND a measure of the “demographic transition” which can help towards sustainability, so it’s one of my favourite charities ever.

Now, back to food.

It’s a mix of things, but by far one of the biggest contributing factors is ethanol. The USA produces about a third of the world’s food, behind China and then India. (We only produce enough calories for about 1% of the world, or “about” 60 million people, so if you hear someone say that high prices are a result of the Australian drought, they are kidding themselves as to our impact on global food prices.)

The USA’s corn to ethanol subsidies are immoral, pure and simple.

First — they are a hoax! There’s nothing “green” about ethanol. It takes SO much fossil fuel energy to grow the crop in the first place that the ERoEI is about 1:1… that is, you only get “about” as much energy back in the ethanol as it took to grow the stuff in the first place. It’s fossil fuels in disguise. (Compare that to a Wind turbine’s ERoEI, which is about 1:50!!!! which is now higher than fossil fuels as fossil fuels reach their peak and all the easy stuff is gone.)

Second: the food thing. Great quote David P, that seems pretty much the situation according to the vast majority of experts I’ve been reading on it.

Now a few more factors: it’s not just ethanol, but high oil prices that are raising the cost of food. Energy costs directly impact on food production. (Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, the Zadok piece I wrote in 2005.)

The NYT: Grains gone wild

April 2008
...First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.

Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.’s go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs....

...But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.

So it’s a complex picture. The Chinese eating more meat may have diverted more grain into producing ethanol, because the left over corn cake after making ethanol can be fed to cattle. Strictly speaking, it’s not fuel v food, but fuel v far less food. (All those corn calories are taken up very inefficiently by the animal — at about 7:1 ratio or 14% according to the NYT piece above).

I love some biofuels, and hate others. I LOVE Biochar, because it seems that’s a way of cooking up a little synfuel or syngas from agri-waste, and then the charcoal pellets sequester Co2 in the soil where it helps the soil come back to life. Those microbes in the soil then sequester even more Co2. It’s a win, win, win thing… not food V fuel, but food AND fuel (some fuel for the farming sector — we’ll be lucky to have food in the shops in 15 years, let alone whining about wanting Biochar-synfuel for our greedy 4WD’s).

Finally, the reason I added the thing about being “allowed” to care about these matters is a while back when it was just a few experts predicting economic mayhem, I was nearly laughed off the forum for talking about these matters “in the future”. Jason and I were repeatedly told we did not “KNOW” these things were going to happen. Now that they are happening pretty much exactly on target, can we come up with a Christian response to ethanol use, peak climate, peak food, peak farmland (depleting at 100 thousand km’s a year), peak fish, peak forests, peak wood, peak fresh water, peak ecosystem services, peak oceanic health, peak ecosystems, peak biodiversity, peak oil gas and coal, peak metals (in the lifetime of babies born today!), and build up of toxic chemicals in the environment?

In other words, can we discuss the real environmental and resource problem: what is a Christian response to overpopulation?

Now that they are happening pretty much exactly on target, can we come up with a Christian response to…

Go for it

Hi David

I don’t get the jump to overpopulation. isn’t over consumption?

also got me thinking about the cost of changing current practice

just wondering how we might prepare for the peak apocalpyse - do you have a recommendation for a car to buy (if any)?

I was using E10 fuel - is it worth it - or is there a biodeisel option that is better- what cars does this work for?

and in terms of wind farming and solar stuff - how practical would this be for the averge home or is it a lobby governemnt thing or both?

any dollar estimates on what it would cost me to make some lifestyle adjustments beside token worm farming, getting rid of the plasma and cloth nappies for the kids?

every blessing

shane

In all seriousness, DaveL’s top 5 recommendations for enviro-conscious Christians would be interesting.

Shane, I was recently having a poke around, looking at the cost of Green energy. Seems to be about 20-30% higher than non-Green energy.

Second: the food thing. Great quote David P, that seems pretty much the situation according to the vast majority of experts I’ve been reading on it.

Dave,

I’m trying so hard to stir you and you are being so irenic. D… it!

Shane Rogerson - 15 April 2008 06:51 PM

]and cloth nappies for the kids?

actually Shane, cloth nappies are no better for the environment than disposable ones. The amount of energy and chemical consumption weighed up against land fill is apparently about the same in terms of harm to the environment. Landfill hasn;t really been on the environmental radar of late really has it? It’s all energy and emission these days.

But more importantly, you still haven’t replied to my e-mail :-)

Cheers

geoff

In other words, can we discuss the real environmental and resource problem: what is a Christian response to overpopulation?

Seriously Dave, you should know better!
Christian’s shouldn’t be spending a lot of time on these issues. We have to tell people the Gospel, and that’s hard and time-consuming! Our theologians have many important issues to discuss and consider God’s will on, and these issues impact on far more people. However, I suppose after we’ve considered every possibly church heirarchial model to see which encourages feelings of community and mission most, and after we’ve triple checked this year’s mass media budget, and of course after we’ve allowed everyone to seek out whichever particular bishop suits their church most, then perhaps we could spend an afternoon or two looking at the trees.

100 million at risk of starvation don’t count?

200 million?

Or does it have to reach our own shores? Do we have to see Woolworths or Coles empty, as Catalyst portrayed it in November 2005? There are practical answers to these things Dannii, but I’m not seeing them introduced. Remember it takes 10 calories of oil and gas to grow just 1 calorie of food.

Will it take billions starving to death for us not to try and present Christianity as “spiritual” first and “practical second”? Isn’t God the Lord of all of our lives? In the garden of Eden, were Adam and Eve told they could trash the garden if it ever interfered with their “spiritual” work?

I think you’re suffering from a false dichotomy there my friend, and it’s Gnostic, with far reaching conclusions.

(I was sarcastic Dave...)