A couple days ago I made a post about ethanol and how many of the purported benefits are actually myths. Today, I have read some news that indicates that, despite the growing food crisis that is pushing millions of people around the world closer to starvation and continued hunger, the push to increase the use of biofuels and the growth of crops to fuel that increased usage continues.

It's a sad - and sick - thing when you have to choose between having food in your fuel tank or food in your home. But that is exactly what is happening right now, as food is taken from people (resulting in starvation and shortages) and converted to fuel for the "green driving" needs of richer, more developed countries.

The prices on wheat, rice, soy, and other grains continues to rise as a result; this is turn impacts everything which these products go into. We see that here in the US in terms of a rise in the cost of food at restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, etc. It also causes countries to stockpile resources for their own people as opposed to exporting them, and in turn for people within those governments to further hoard food supplies (resulting in fewer people getting what they need in those countries); the current "rice crisis" is just such an example. This can be found fully explained here:

Understanding the Global Rice Crisis

Mercola.com also has a good article explaining some of the other factors behind the rise in food prices and food shortages (and while it's not just ethanol, it does play a role):

Beware - Food Crisis Getting Worse

The question then becomes: when will it be our turn?

Fact is, it's already happening:

Sam's Club, Costco Limit Rice Purchases

Granted, this is in reference to bulk purchases and, as it states in the article, smaller stores are not limiting rice purchases at the moment, but the point is that little ripples make big waves. Restaurants here are hoarding their supplies and a newspaper article from a couple weeks ago (which unfortunately I haven't been able to find again) cited that some NY bakeries' flour suppliers are discussing rationing.

And once again, it's the lower classes that are feeling the punch. I mentioned in my blog post from 4/21 (Musings on Tools, Tara, Materialism, & Worship), food stamps don't adequately cover the current costs of fresh fruits and vegetables, and many of the worst foods available are the cheapest - and most often purchased as a result. Yet even these fatty, salty, corn-syrup-and-trans-fat laden foods are increasing in price. How many products in the grocery store today feature corn in some form, be it in syrup or starch form? Worse yet, it's into this morass that the GMO-hawking big agribusinesses have stepped in.

Back in the 1990s, GMOs were touted as the answer to world hunger. Monsanto and others said that GMOs would put an end to starvation and revitalize the agricultural industry. The Clinton Administration - strong supporters of GMOs - gave these giants full backing and the green light. However, not enough testing was done on these GMOs, the effects they would have on the human body, and the effects they would have on the environment. One unexpected side effect was that bees would not pollinate GMO crops; similarly, flowers associated with these crops have no smell. Neither do many greenhouse flowers these days.

On top of that GMOs have not solved any hunger issues, anywhere.

What they have done is create new strains of super-pests and super-weeds which have devastated the environment and threaten to wipe out various species of plants. The answer to this has been to create even stronger pesticides and herbicides which have further polluted the soil, air, and waterways, and caused further damage to the environmental balance. In fact, one could say that today the very concept of there being balance in our environment is rather skewed. Look at what happened in India.

Monsanto forbids farmers from saving any seeds from the crops and has prosecuted those who have tried - instead, you have to continually buy more and more seeds. The reason? Monsanto has patents on plants (yes, you read that right). And if it's discovered that you have Monsanto's Frankenplants growing in your fields and you don't have the license for it, you get sued. More on that can be found here, in some detail:

Millions Against Monsanto

As to the hunger issues - GMO crops are less productive than their non-GMO counterparts:

Roundup Ready Soy Less Profitable

This means that they need to be planted in higher numbers to produce a yield anywhere close to a conventional amount - meaning more land and water is required to get a profit, making them ultimately more expensive in the long run. This is similar to the situation with Posilac - dairy farmers say that it means cows produce more milk, so they need fewer cows; truth is, what it means is that cows are tapped out faster and so ultimately you need to keep getting more cows as older cows tire out. The turnover rate is astounding - while dairy farms which don't inject their cows with Posilac don't produce huge quantities, they aren't having to go out and constantly replace cows either. In addition - and this is the scary part - the consumers don't even consume all the milk produced by cows treated with Posilac. They produce so much that the government has to buy the surplus - which is ultimately thrown out. In other words, Posilac results in the production of tremendous amounts of milk being tossed - at taxpayers' expense.

Now the GMO-supporters are stepping in saying that GMO foods can meet the needs of people in this current fuel crisis, and many countries in Europe and Asia which were previously opposed to GMO food have begun to relax their standards. The only people that are going to get any money out of this in the end are the big corporations - in the meantime, everyone else is going to be saddled with GMO-laden food products, and the health problems that come with them.

One of the things which GMO products have shown a link to is the rise in the number and ferocity of food allergies. Back in the late 1990s research was shown to back this up:

Soy Allergy/Adverse Effects Rates Skyrocket

And recent articles in publications such as Time Magazine have pointed this out. There are children who are allergic to wheat, soy, peanuts, and rice at rates unheard of 10 years ago, and the allergies they have are serious indeed.

Where does all this put us? In an ugly and difficult place indeed. We need to face facts: the people who are ultimately going to come out of this fuel/food/environmental crisis flush are not going to be the environmentalists, the recyclers, the sustainable agriculturalists, etc - it's going to be the big businesses. These big business and mega-corporations have been keeping track of the trends - and the whole concept of "green living" is yet another trend they have capitalized on. Many people thought that it was great when organic cotton clothes, towels, and bedding came out - but very few people looked at the practises and affiliations of the companies producing them. Instead, the majority has blindly contributed to one of the biggest commercial and media schemes of the decade, and it's done next to nothing for the environment. For an excellent example of this, look inside a Claire's store. What exactly does buying $8 seashell earings and rubber bracelets with metal medallions saying "peace" do for the environment? It's more junk that will end up in a landfill.

I remember being told that back in the late 1960s what killed the hippie movement was commercialism - it became a marketed fad, a fashion statement. What began as a social experiment had become something too heavily tainted by drugs and outsiders to do any real good; it had become something other than what it was intended to be, it had strayed far from the original idea and morphed into a marketing scheme. The Diggers staged the "Death of Hippie" march in the Haight-Ashbury where a large coffin carried by masked performers was carried through the streets stuffed with posters, love beads, tie-dye, and other accoutrements. But it was what was on the side of the coffin that was perhaps the most telling: "Hippie - Son of Media".

It seems that much the same has happened to the environmental and green movement - perhaps we should create a large, recycled wood coffin, paint "Green Movement - Child of Corporation and Media" using non-toxic, all natural paint, and stuff it to the gills with Birkenstocks, Guatemalan shirts, hemp clothing/jewelry, $120 Levi's organic jeans, $299 all-organic-cotton bedding, recycled plastic products, Whole Foods canvas shopping bags, and a host of other goodies and trappings. On top should be a copy of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth - because it's an inconvenient truth that the man has a tremendous carbon footprint despite his claims to being green, and it's an inconvenient truth that his concert did little to raise awareness of environmental concerns - instead, it generated enormous amounts of trash, litter, and waste and resulted in even more fuel consumption and air pollution.

This being done, the whole mess should be carried on the shoulders of people dressed in full mourning drag down Pennsylvania Avenue, which should be lined with environmentalists, granolas, vegans, Green Party supporters and others in stereotypical dress tossing emblems and trinkets into the coffin before it gets to the end of the route, where it should be burned in front of the US Capitol.

As shocking an idea as it may seem, the fact is this. The Diggers hoped that in doing "Death of Hippie" that people would shed the trappings of hippiedom - the commercial image - and become "Free Man". In short, the idea was to enter into a new state of consciousness, to face a new reality. It was supposed to be a rebirth of the great social experiment, but people just didn't get it (probably too many drugs).

To my mind, that is what needs to happen to the Green Movement. We need to shed the trappings, get rid of the material exterior, and rebirth this social experiment into something that gets to the heart of the issue - not something that can be turned into a commercial venture by big corporations and/or the media. Just as the Diggers were trying to get people to move past the images created by participants themselves and hyped by the media, so we need to move past the same if we are going to come to a realistic understanding of the big environmental picture.

In short, we need to take our social movement back from the profiteers and carpetbaggers of the 21st century.