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Friday, July 4, 2008 12:00 AM

A biofuel food-price bombshell

The U.K. Guardian reports some astonishing numbers from a "confidential" World Bank study on energy crops and grain prices.

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  • Friday, July 4, 2008 04:47 PM

    @rodian

    It's just amazing to me that no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: there are too goddamn many people.

    Incorrect.

    The elephant is total consumption. If somehow the total population was reduced by half tomorrow, but that half all consumed like the wealthiest today, we'd be in even worse shape.

    It is a common dodge among the privileged to point at excessive population as the problem. The problem is not how many humans there are, but how many resources those humans use in total. The numerous poor use far less per capita.

    Note that China, which has drastically reduced its population growth, is an environmental basket case primarily because its resource consumption has risen so dramatically--and far faster then the slowing increase in its population.

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