Mother Gaia is Overrun by Humans and She is Getting Feverish. What to Do, What to Do?

If higher food costs--a euphemism for starvation or famine in the third world--are the price for subsidizing first-world agricultural special interests fighting global warming and the greedy energy companies, political elites in the USA and Europe seem entirely willing to pay it.

These philosopher-kings dare not publicly refer to the global population-control implications, but I wonder how many of their minds the thought crosses.

April 22, 2008 Follow-Up. Instapundit links to this report of shortages, hoarding and retailer-imposed purchase ceilings for rice, flour and oil in the USA.

Presumably this particular instance is not the beginning of full-blown shortages, but it's yet another indicator of how poorly the country is being run.

At some point people will start muttering that we'd be better off with the military running things.

Afterthought. Walter Williams is unimpressed:

...If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.
...
The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?

Here's an agricultural analysis of the ethanol subsidy's consequences.

Second afterthought. Here's a black-humorous way of expressing something that I couldn't articulate well:

No wonder the environmentalists are pushing ethanol so hard. It *can* save the planet. Ethanol = Starvation = Greener Planet

I wonder how many well-bred first-worlders who are not environmental extremists have the thought, "Distressing, but the planet is overpopulated..."

And never ever acknowledge their reaction or share it with anyone else.