HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008E-I-E-I-O Read an article today on the Guardian UK about a massive shortage of bread in Egypt. We've got people going hungry in Uganda, in North Korea, in Zimbabwe. There are starving people all over the world and there are people in the States, too, who are facing rising costs at the grocery that are making it harder to put food on the table. At the same time, we're suffering in America from health problems brought about by foods that rely too much on corn syrup. Corn syrup that requires shitloads of corn, I've gotta guess. Then there's also the vast numbers of farms where they're growing corn for use in Ethanol. That's an awful lot of corn, an awful lot of farmers and an awful lot of land being used. Now, I'm kind of an idiot. I've got no real depth of knowledge on this subject and I freely admit that I might be grossly misinformed here, but doesn't it seem like we could solve all three of these problems--or at least make a bit of progress on them--if we just used some common sense? Corn syrup's bad. I use corn syrup in my pecan pie, but I'm making that once or twice a year and I'm not even sure if Caro is the same as the shit they load into junk food. Why don't we take this whole "banning trans fats" thing a step further and craft some legislation that requires makers of various shitty foods to start doing away with the corn syrup? Ethanol, as far as I can tell from what I've read everyplace except maybe in propaganda from the super-powerful Ethanol lobby, is not that fucking great. It's not solving global warming or even really putting the tiniest of dents in global warming. So why don't we move on to other types of alternate fuels that actually fucking work and we can shitcan Ethanol. Then, we can take all of these farmers who're making money off all this non-edible corn and we can have them grow food that could be used to feed all these hungry folks around the world. Hell, I wouldn't even object to continuing to pay them their subsidies, if it helped feed some poor family in Egypt who can't afford a goddamn loaf of bread. Can we get on this, please?
Comments:
Caro syrup is not the same. It's the "high fructose corn syrup" that's the problem. (The "high fructose" being the nasty part.)
# posted by
 : 7:30 PM
Have you read The Omnivore's Dilemma? It helped me understand this whole corn thing a bit better.
# posted by
: 10:26 PM
The problem is we are being led down the garden path. Like we can grow our way out of the upcoming energy crunch. Right.
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I read recently that it takes a gallon of oil to produce 1.5 gallons of ethanol. Now I do not know this to be true or not. But knowing our tendency to find knee jerk solutions to problems that we should have prepared for better, I do not doubt the estimate is in the ball park. What I am wondering is, besides the gallon of oil used to gain a half gallon on the plus side, isn't there also more crap being dumped into the air, the streams, the land just to produce more energy that will dump more crap into the land, the streams, and the air? I guess as long as folks are making money, it's okay. We are facing what we deserve. Get used to it.
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