> Einstein wrote:

>As for pollution in China... You have no EPA, OSHA, DEQ, or equivalent agencies.
>Your government wants growth, and safety is only relevent when the disaster is so
>outrageous that the population might rise up if it is not addressed. Like children
>making fireworks in schools instead of doing schoolwork.

>That will change when you overthrow the government, killing most of them in the
>process, and fix your nation a bit.

Did I really read this right?  A Republican congressional candidate is suggesting that the proletariat should overthrow their government in order to institute job-killing government bureaucracies?

One thing to remember about the EPA... although there are definitely areas where it could be improved, definitely including some over-regulated areas, the general idea of environmental protection isn't some concept which Republicans are universally supposed to disagree with.  Just like the idea of regulation... the debate's generally not a question of 0 government vs. total government dictation of everything (barring some political extremes).  Rather, both sides have their interpretation of the "ideal" amount of regulation, each of which fits along a spectrum, somewhere around the middle (whether the "ideal" amount of regulation is in the form of an overall axiom or a case by case analysis is up to the individual... either way, it fits the same type of explanation).

He doesn't have any, just his own delusions...

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> "Lastly, in environmentalists views, the required subsidies could be spent on other programs they think could work"

I agree with this bit, but not as an environmentalist - simply as a humanitarian.  Ethanol from food crops during a global food crisis is an absurd proposition at best and potentially criminal at worst.

Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but I want to throw a curveball into the works here:

The food crisis was directly responsible for the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East.  The most successful uprisings, most notably in Egypt, definitely began over complaints about high food prices (attributable to ethanol subsidies).  Without those uprisings, millions of people would still be living under brutal dictatorships willing to manipulate their monopoly over oil reserves for political leverage against their people and foreign nations.

Think about that for a moment.  How does that play into the right/wrong worldview? 

Not quite... it's not rooted in high oil prices.  Actually, in some cases, it's quite the opposite.  Remember, when oil prices are high, oil nations generally manage to keep the population quiet by subsidizing every product on the market.  So if food prices rise along with oil prices, oil revenues will be redirected to subsidize food, keeping food prices low so the people don't feel the effects.

I'm looking at a data sheet on oil prices during the past 5 years... the Arab Spring actually began during a period of relatively mild prices... and by "mild," I mean "not as high as the insane high prices we were seeing before the financial crisis..." around $70-$80 per barrel.  For perspective, July 2008 prices were $144 per barrel.

http://www.nyse.tv/crude-oil-price-history.htm

So the perfect storm scenario is one in which oil prices are low and food prices are high.  That actually happened during the beginning of the financial crisis in Iran, where the government began to see unrest due to economic issues associated with falling oil revenue and increasing needs for food subsidies.

I really wasn't suggesting this as some sort of long term scenario, though.  I was just highlighting a historical fact: If ethanol was not subsidized in the US, Egypt, Libya, and other countries in the Middle East would never have seen the democratic reforms they are seeing now.  +1 points for ethanol and unintended consequences

"As of 2011, 1.3 billion tons of food, about one third of the global food production, are lost or wasted annually."

"...compared with 400 US gallons per acre (3,750 l/ha) for corn production"

"In 2010 worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 22.95 billion U.S. liquid gallons(bg) (86.9 billion liters)"

So this would equate to 22950000000/400=57375000 acre's of corn fields for the 2010 production.

"The US nationwide average corn yields are: Grain -- 150 bushels per acre, or 4.2 US tons per acre" (not a reliable source, but not going to try and sift through ALL of the harvest reports for each year and come up with my own average).

So we have 57375000 acre's of farmland producing ethanol, so if we stopped ethanol production and produced food, we would get 57375000*4.2=240975000 tons of corn.

So in 2010 there was 1300000000 tons of food wastage, so lets take our extra food we obtained from stopping ethanol production and take it away from our wastage (1300000000-240975000=1059025000). This is still over 1 billion tons for food wasted in the world each year.

Ethanol production is only but a very small component of the food production in the world, yet it leads to starvation of the masses?

"In low-income countries most loss occurs during production, while in developed countries much food

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> "Ethanol production is only but a very small component of the food production in the world, yet it leads to starvation of the masses?"

What are the circumstances of the wasted food?  Where is it wasted?  Why?

When you ask about circumstances, I get the feeling you are trying to make a point that the wastage is away from the consumer, which is true in some parts of the world. In the Western world however, thanks to innovations in transport and storage of food, the wastage is closer to the consumer than production. Now what I suggest is something every individual can contribute to, and that is changing their eating habits to a diet that minimises wastage (and thus changes purchasing habits leaving more food in the global food pool). Your option is to contribute to a rise of less than 1.5% increase from not producing ethanol from corn (other methods do exist, and would need to look at the area/amounts needed to produce ethanol) (4000000000*0.015=60000000).

"In 2008, world population is 6.7 billion: 1.2 billion people live in regions classified as more developed by the United Nations"

As indicated by my previous post, on average each one of those persons wastes 100kg of food each year (and this is defined as wastage BY the consumer, and for the US and Oceania, its 110kg of food per person). So in total there is a wastage of (1200000000*100=120000000000, we divide by 1000 to convert to tons) 120 million tons of food wasted by the western world BY the consumer. We cut out HALF of the wastage by consumers, we have more than what is used for ethanol production (something we ACTUALLY still use).

But lets look at this in another way, the US exports about 20% of its corn produced. Of this, most of the corn is exported to local or Asian markets, with Japan being the largest importer of US corn, followed by Mexico, Korea, and then Taiwan. Of these 4 countries, how much of their population is starving? Now Corn is a versatile product, "[the] plant can thrive in climates as diverse as the arid desert plains of the southwestern United States and the high Andean mountain plains of Ecuador and Peru". So unless there is a shortage of corn/food in either the US, Japan, Mexico, Korea, or Taiwan, producing more corn would have only a slight affect on global hunger (I say slight, because satisfying someones craving for corn in Korea will mean he won't use another source of food which frees that up for someone else). The land itself is not suitable for growing many other products, and it would take more resources to produce other crops in these locations, and not only that, farmers would need to convert their farming techniques and equipment to produce other products.

Is the food wasted in regions where there are high rates of poverty or starvation?

"In low-income countries most loss occurs during production, while in developed countries much food

I will post more here later... when at home and I can better pull up urls

PROOF that alcohol solves everything

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/wine-dregs-cut-cow-methane-emissions-makes-better-163439720.html

I'm opposed to all agencies making regulations without going back to Congress.

The system of having the EPA write its own regulations and then calling on Congress to pass laws striking them down if they suck, gives the presumption of power to non-elected agencies.