Don’t Burn Food for Fuel – As Seen on National Geographic

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“Cornheap” by en:User:Pratheepps. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

At the risk of inviting all the usual charges of being politically incorrect, I once again put before you the strange practice of burning food for fuel. The video at the bottom of the post details some of the human costs associated with the increasing use of corn, grains, and other crops for fuel.

There is a tendency for environmentalists of our time to think very narrowly about their issues. It is a praiseworthy thing to seek to reduce pollutants and other things that have negative environmental impacts. The Catechism summons us to good stewardship of the earth, the environment, and our natural resources.

However, the human cost of significant changes (to include higher taxes, the elimination of certain technologies altogether, and other things) should be part of the equation. This is especially true in terms of how it affects the developing world. Yet in my experience, the human cost is almost never presented honestly.

Whatever good intentions environmentalists have, the planet, the climate, and the environment seem to be the overwhelming focus of their concern, at least for the most radical of them. And if human beings are considered at all, we are collectively just a big problem: there are too many of us, we do lots of bad stuff, and it seems that the earth would be better off without us.

So here’s an edgy video, from the National Geographic video site, no less! For the record, let me say again that it is a bad idea to burn food for fuel. And if the video below is correct, it’s going to get worse unless we have an honest conversation and come to some consensus that burning food for fuel IS bad.

Stay tuned; this issue is bound to heat up. I pray that common sense will prevail over what is most certainly a bad idea, one which will harm the poor disproportionally.

I know that I normally use my Friday blog for more light-hearted fare, but this video is what popped up in my video queue today. I’m glad to see the concerns are spreading.