Gore's Ethanol Investments

As the media slowly turns against ethanol - because the growing international food crisis is much more sensational- there's one idol they have yet to examine: Untouchable Saint Nobel Laureate Al Gore.

Al has strongly advocated the use of biofuels for years, and even has also admitted to having investments in companies involved in such agri-business.

Of course, it's possible the popular press aren't convinced enough about the the connection between ethanol and rising food prices around the world that they're willing to fell their Green God? Here's some pesky data from Marlo Lewis's spectacular piece "Food for Fuel Is No Laughing Matter"

According to the USDA, total U.S. corn production was 11.8 billion bushels in 2004/05 and will reach an estimated 13 billion bushels in 2007/08 — an increase of 1.2 billion bushels. Corn production for ethanol was 1.3 billion bushels in 2004/05 and will reach an estimated 3.2 billion bushels in 2007/08 — an increase of 1.9 billion bushels. Ethanol manufacture is consuming all the increase in total U.S. corn production, and then some.

Indeed, according to the World Bank, “Almost all of the increase in global maize [corn] production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for bio-fuels production in the U.S., while existing stocks were depleted by an increase in global consumption for other uses.” The World Bank explains: “From 2004 to 2007, global maize production increased 51 million tons, biofuel use in the U.S. increased 50 million tons and global consumption for all other uses increased 33 million tons, which caused global stocks to decline by 30 million tons.” That bears repeating: “Almost all” the increase in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 went to produce ethanol in the United States, and in the process global corn stocks declined by 30 million tons. How could that not have dramatic effects on global corn prices?

And this includes wheat, since Congress artificially increases the demand for and price of corn, wheat farmers are able to charge more for their product and still be competitive.

The one factor exacerbating world hunger that Congress can do something about is U.S. biofuel policy. Repealing the corn ethanol mandate would free up billions of bushels to feed people and livestock. Grain prices would fall — by an estimated 20 percent for corn and 10 percent for wheat, according to IFPRI.

When you get right down to it, the ethanol mandate is just a Soviet-style production quota system in green garb. Even the green tint is rubbing off as experts document how corn ethanol produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the gasoline it displaces, and how Europe’s biofuel directive is bankrolling rainforest destruction and species loss in Indonesia and Malaysia. Even Time magazine, a voice of global warming alarmism, now calls the U.S. and EU biofuel programs a “clean energy scam.”

And Professor Al Gore is right in the middle of this. The time has come for media's disgust with ethanol to begin exposing those that advocated it, and are financially benefiting from it.

If it makes them feel better, they can follow such reports with another segment on Dick Cheney having run Halliburton years ago.