Recent headlines remind us of the fact that the push for so-called “bio-fuels” to replace petroleum — all in the name of decreasing global warming (sorry, “climate change”) — is increasing the cost of food all over the world.
This should be no surprise, really.
When we shuck corn only to put it down our gas tank, and leave perfectly good oil in the ground, it doesn’t take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out that the prices of both ethanol gas and food will increase. When there is less corn to put down our collective gullet, what remains of it will cost more.
Orthodox religious communities who maintain belief in man’s stewardship of the earth and its resources should seriously begin talking about this, if they haven’t already. It is no stretch to hold that taking the food out of poor mouths in order to fuel automobiles raises serious moral questions. This is especially so when the solution is to use oil for what it’s good for — fueling automobiles, which would free us to use corn for what it’s good for — fueling babies.
Some will say that the scientific evidence is clear and that man-made greenhouse emissions cause climate change. Assuming, arguendo, that the many presumptions and assumptions in this claim are correct, this still leaves the bio-fuel crowd in a curious position: put corn in our gas tanks now to avoid the potential loss of life from a melting glacier some time in the future, while taking corn out of the mouths of the world’s poor now and leaving them to definite starvation and death in food riots.
It is a gross distortion of the creation mandate (Genesis 2) to abandon the use of a peferctly good resource (oil and its by-products) and to mis-use another resource (food) to account for its absence.