William Yeatman

World Bank President Robert Zoellick says a global food crisis demands the immediate attention of world leaders.

In Stalin's Russia any dissenter from the Party Line was guilty. Innocence had to be proved. It's a standard tyrant's trick. During the reign of Oliver Cromwell in England, witchhunters did not have to prove that their victims were guilty. The accused witches had to prove their innocence.

We're in a busy period of hurricane activity that will inflict unimaginable damage, but global warming is not the cause, leading researchers told the nation's foremost forecasters and other experts Friday.

Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades.

After five days of contentious discussions in Bangkok, governments from nearly 200 countries last week agreed to an agenda for further talks to forge a new United Nations global warming agreement. One sticking point has been developing nations' insistence that industrialized countries should take the first steps in reducing emissions and should help finance reductions in developing countries. But this represents a serious misreading of the underlying economic situation.

Reaching an timely agreement on setting up an effective global climate protection system will be "very difficult", a senior UN official said on Wednesday ahead of the Budapest session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Angry protesters, riot police, mass demonstrations, arrests for disorderly conduct — it hasn't  exactly been smooth sailing for the Olympic-torch relay. If people are looking for another reason to be pissed at China, how about this: By the time this pyro parade is over, it will have produced about 11 million pounds of carbon emissions.

Part of the law is fanciful. It calls for the creation of 25,000 so-called green jobs by 2020 without specifying where those jobs will come from, or what they will be. In any case, it's ridiculous to think that the government can create thousands of jobs with the flick of a pen, unless we are talking about bureaucrats.

Latest unstable country to experience riots as a result of increasing food prices brought on, at least in part, by the Ethanol Mandate is our old friend Haiti: 

“Hungry Haitians stormed the presidential palace Tuesday to demand the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices and U.N. peacekeepers battled rioters with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Rioters were chased away from the presidential palace but by late afternoon had left trails of destruction across Port-au-Prince. Concrete barricades and burned-out cars blocked streets, while windows were smashed and buildings set on fire from the capital's center up through its densely populated hills.

Outnumbered U.N. peacekeepers watched as people looted businesses near the presidential palace, not budging from the building's perimeter. Nearby, but out of sight of authorities, another group swarmed a slow-moving car and tried to drag its female driver out the window.

"We are hungry! He must go!" protesters shouted as they tried to break into the presidential palace by charging its chained gates with a rolling dumpster. Moments later, Brazilian soldiers in blue U.N. helmets arrived on jeeps and assault vehicles, firing rubber bullets and tear gas canisters and forcing protesters away from the gates.

Food prices, which have risen 40 percent on average since mid-2007, are causing unrest around the world. But nowhere do they pose a greater threat to democracy than in Haiti, one of the world's poorest countries where in the best of times most people struggle to fill their bellies.”

Haiti follows Egypt, Indonesia and Mexico to suffer such unrest in recent months.  If you want to destablize poor countries, raising food prices is a good way to do it, and supporting ethanol mandates is a good way to do that.  The poor Haitians have been reduced to eating dirt:

“For months, Haitians have compared their hunger pains to "eating Clorox" because of the burning feeling in their stomachs. The most desperate have come to depend on a traditional hunger palliative of cookies made of dirt, vegetable oil and salt.”

What a triumph for the socially-conscious!  Henceforth, in the spirit of Cobden and Bright, I shall be referring to the ethanol mandate as the Food Tax.