[Peace-discuss] Biofuels are prime cause of food crisis, says leaked (World Bank) report -

[E. Wayne Johnson]

continuing ...

The ethics of biofuels seem to be parallel the ethics of stupidity...and 
raise questions like,
is it really unethical to do stupid things?  How about stupid things 
that shift massive amounts
of money and capital and starve the poorest people in our world?  What 
about those who
know what the consequences of their actions are? and willingly choose to 
starve the  poor?

There is a sort of ethics of Entropy, too.  The growing of food by 
agricultural methods gives us
highly complex products that are useful as food.  Grain is a product of 
relatively high complexity
and relatively high degree of order. Burn it or its starch for fuel to 
release its heat and you expend all of the order, complexity and
neg-entropy  and you get CO2 which has no further potential other than 
to be repolymerized into new carbon chains.

It makes as much sense as heating the art museums next winter by burning 
the paintings and frames.
At least only aesthetic information is lost, and even so not lost 
entirely because we can photograph the art
and preserve it forever digitally.  It's not Americans who are starving 
to death (yet) so its OK for Americans
to squander the precious food resources?

According to the UN world food programme
(http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/hunger_map/map/hungermap_popup/map_popup.html)
there are more than 800 million undernourished in the world.  Look at 
the map above and you
can see where they live.

Brazil is held up to us as the shining example of a food exporting country
that produces biofuels from sugar cane grown for that purpose.  Note 
that Brazil is exporting commodities and
ethanoling its automobiles, but it is not feeding its poor.  Is that an 
example for us to follow?