Cuban President Fidel Castro condemned Thursday the US food for fuel strategy....
In Peru, La Republica daily echoed the Cuban leader’s statements, pointing out the ethanol tragedy lies in the idea of turning food into fuel.
Ecuador’s Universo highlighted Fidel Castro accusation that US President George W. Bush will doom over 3 billion people to "premature death."
Is this right?
I'm not worried about the correctness of the number of people doomed. Just about the inherent problem of turning food -- especially a staple so fundamental to the global diet, and especially the western hemisphere's diet -- into fuel.
Can we justify diverting food into fuel, when hunger is by no means a solved problem?
And from a political perspective, does it help at all that Castro is leveling this accusation? Assuming he is right, how are we supposed to rally to this cause as the American left?
Or how about this fact:
"corn has always been the staple food of the Mayan and other South American populations, but it will now be used to feed machines, for money and profits, destroying thousand-year-old cultures."
So, corn is sacred to indigenous people. Are we supposed to sell that in the United States as an argument against ethanol?
Source for all quoted material above.
Fire away...