I forgot to make one of my points (I might be a little drunk too...). I kind of bought into the feel good ads that BP did about "we are an energy company, and we will evolve to provide the energy of the future, blah, blah, ...". Well there are a few scenarios where delivering the energy of the future doesn't include any role for BP or the other big petroleum companies, and I'll bet that scares the hell out of them. So I think since their very survival depends on being part of the picture (whatever the "energy of the future" picture looks like) they will fight like any beast does when faced with the possibility of it's own demise - no holds barred.

In your haste to take umbrage, you exhibited a very poor level of reading comprehension.

The "crime against humanity" isn't the act of growing corn for fuel, it's when governments mandate that we should grow corn for fuel.

Obviously anyone ought to be able to see the problem with a government mandating such an action in a vacuum.

...speculation has nothing to do with it. Krugman covered this territory recently with regard to oil prices, and in fact his argument works even better for perishables w/o in-ground storage. Where are all the warehouses bursting with stored grain, which these speculators are holding off the market? If they don't exist (and it should be pretty hard to hide that much grain), then how, exactly, is the futures price affecting the spot price?

-AK48

that the adults are in charge? Thank you again, GB. Another massive screw up occurring on your watch.

A question: What's going to happen next winter when many people in this country aren't going to be able to pay for heating oil for their houses? What then? Think about it.

The people evangelizing and driving bio-diesel are mostly lefty environmentalists. I also know of at least one environmental organization that allied with agribusiness to promote ethanol. The article takes a swipe at the Bush administration, but it's not just their fault. It is our own.

Environmentalists care little about social equity, and place the burden on the world's poor. That inequity undermines long-term environmental goals.

No one wants to talk about reducing total resource use.

Gee, thanks.

Then we have to say that *any* agricultural production that is not for food is a crime against humanity. I hope you've never purchased cut flowers...

Then it's not too long to say that if you're not a vegetarian, you're committing a crime against humanity... After all, if you're eating meat, you're using up a lot more acres per calorie than if you're a vegetarian.

Let's keep the rhetoric under control, shall we? I happen to agree that corn-based ethanol is pretty stupid, but corn-based ethanol isn't the only player in the biofuel game, and saying that biofuels are a crime against humanity is not only over-the-top, it's a gross generalization in a field where there are *many* options that don't involve using corn.

Try googling "2nd generation biofuel" or even "3rd generation biofuel" some time, you may be surprised (and impressed) with what you find.

That said though:

Biofuels require increasing the production of food on a worldwide scale. The thing is, that this means changing politics and cultural norms when it comes to dealing with the third world - particularly Africa.

There needs to be a stop to the indulgent concept of missionaries teaching Africans about subsistance farming. Subsistance farms aren't very effecient as a means of producing food at the best of times, and they guarantee famines when times are not at their best.

Further, the mechanism which allowed Africa to become so heavily indebted as its leaders invested the loaned money in things like guns, death camps and the latest Mercedes Benz, needs to be looked into.

The facts seem to be: A rich country distorts the market at the behest of a few farm state senators and their huge agribusiness patrons in a way that causes hunger and sometimes starvation for millions. That strikes me has pretty criminal, actually.

And the number of thoughtful environmentalists who support corporate corn production for ethanol fuel is around zero (although there are probably a few outliers). There have got to be more efficient ways to produce energy than planting, fertilizing, spraying with pesticides, and harvesting a bunch of low efficiency solar panels.

The oil companies (which usually do refining and distribution too) are NOT going to just quietly fade into the sunset. They are going to do everything they can to push us into using some type of liquid fuel for cars...

Yes -- this is the primary reason why we hear so much about hydrogen-fueled cars.

It's a liquid fuel, and they know how to deal with liquid fuels. Never mind the enormous inefficiencies that come from producing and even transporting the hydrogen, nor the fact that the practical storage technologies to date have no better energy density than Li-ion batteries ; you still get car companies pushing it as the main alternative to gasoline, and also some naive environmentalists tagging along.

... and from their point of view if it is petroleum based, then the upgrading might not even need to happen (oil from shale or coal or algae or plants).

Yes again. The primary source of hydrogen today is natural gas.

JohnnyMM, you nailed the real issue behind our energy problems exactly. But what you missed is the "entitlement" problem. The large, very wealthy corporations who are currently making obscene profits off providing energy resources to the United States absolutely believe they're ENTITLED to keep doing so. They're the new "welfare queens" but, unlike government programs over which we have some control, they get to charge us whatever level of private taxes they like to keep them in their "welfare Cadillacs", since we can't do without their product.

They are and will continue to use their massive profits to buy (oh, I'm sorry, "lobby") politicians to do things their way, but the fact is, as stated weeks ago by Andrew Leonard in a previous article, using currently-available technology, we could convert to suppling all the energy needs of the U.S. with photo-voltaic cells, wind power, etc. within twelve years. All that's required is that we start the conversion process.

Within twelve years, "peak oil" could be rendered irrelevant to the US economy and, as an added bonus, a group of very wealthy and powerful people who have done everything in their power to keep sucking maximum resources out of the rest of us while setting up bogus groups of bought and paid for "scientists" to lie to us about how they're destroying the planet in the process, would have the rug pulled completely out from under them.

What's not to like? I say we start in January 2009!