Mark Steyn has an article over at NRO where he blames the admittedly unwise ethanol subsidies for the global food crisis. It is a good example of what happens when you try to force a pet issue into the context of an unrelated issue. You end up missing the big picture. Let's be clear, I think corn ethanol subsidies, like all agricultural subsidies, are a very bad idea. But are they really killing people? Not really. In fact they are a pretty small part of the problem.
First, are rising corn prices the problem? No, rising rice prices are the biggest problem. Rice is the world's most popular food item and its price has risen faster than any other grain. Yes, their have been some riots over corn and wheat, but most of the riots are about rice prices. But Mr. Steyn doesn't talk about rice, does he? The reason is obvious: rice isn't used to make biofuels. Nor is rice a substitute crop for either corn or sugar, the primary sources of biofuels. Rice fields need to be flooded at the beginning of the growing cycle. If you do that to a corn field, the corn will rot and you will lose your crops. So you cannot convert a rice field to a corn field without expensive water control infrastructure. Even if the infrastructure changes were free, farmers still wouldn't do it because rice prices are rising faster than corn prices. So it's clear that the most important price increase has nothing to do with biofuels. But that doesn't fit Steyn's argument, so he ignores it.
So what's causing the rise in rice prices? There are some supply factors. The ten-year drought in Australia has caused rice production to fall by 98%, according to a recent NY Times article. The authors try to lay the blame there, but last year's cyclone in West Bengal and Bangladesh wiped out more rice than Australia ever produced. The article ignores that part of the problem because it doesn't fit their theory. There have also been droughts in Africa, but taken all together, the supply issues are not that much different than in any other year. There are always droughts and cyclones. The real problem is on the demand side. And it's not due to an increase in population, because rice production has risen at about the same rate as population. The real culprit here is the rising affluence of Asia. The growing affluence allows people in Asia to be able to afford to eat meat. And the demand for meat in Asia has surely skyrocketed. In nutritional terms, meat takes about ten times the amount of grain to produce the same nutrition as the grain itself. This is creating an unusual demand spike that will take years to compensate for with increased production. But few among us are willing to admit that our meat consumption is really the primary cause of the problem. So, like Mr. Steyn, we invent other culprits.
Ahh, but that doesn't explain the rise in corn prices, does it? That is surely caused by ethanol production, right? Wrong. To understand this, we need to understand what corn is really used for. Only 15% of the world's corn is used for ethanol. By comparison, 55% is used as feed to produce meat. By any reasonable standard, we should place at least three times the blame on meat than we place on ethanol. But most of us eat meat, so we don't want to hear about that, do we? So we say: "yeah, but meat production has always occurred, while ethanol is the new factor." While this is mostly true (whiskey has long been produced from corn), the increase in global meat consumption still accounts for a greater increase in corn demand. But there's another issue as well. One of the byproducts from producing ethanol from corn is feed for livestock. In fact, the ethanol byproducts are actually better nutrition for the animals than raw corn because it's easier to digest. So, we take corn that would have been fed to pigs and make ethanol out of it. Then we take the byproducts and feed them back to the pigs. There is a small nutritional loss in the system and there are assorted transportation costs as well. But the crowding out effect is much smaller than we would think. And much smaller than the overall rise in demand from meat consumption.
But the dirty secret here is that I've so far ignored the primary cause of the increase in corn prices: the collapse of the US Dollar. Measured in Euros, corn prices have risen fairly slowly. Roughly half of the current price increase is due to the decrease in the value of the dollar. For rice, it's less of a factor because rice has risen more sharply, but it's still a big one. But is anyone blaming the Treasury Department for people starving? Of course not. It would be unseemly to blame a Republican for the consequences of his policies. Of course, that affects the US price, but what about the rest of the world? Well, riots over corn are occurring mostly in Mexico, South America, and Central America. And those countries have currencies that have recently been performing even worse than the American dollar. So the exchange rate issue is even more acute for them. Which is why they're rioting. The Asian currencies have performed considerably better than the dollar, but they mostly eat rice, which has risen faster, so they're pretty much in the same boat.
The final problem with Steyn's argument is that he equates corn ethanol and biofuels. Corn ethanol is a very inefficient process, but sugar cane ethanol is not. The complaints about supply crowding that aren't particularly valid are even less valid for sugar cane. And Bush's favorite, switchgrass, grows on land that really isn't suitable for food production and produces no crowding effects. For once, George Bush actually got something right. But he is actually a closet environmentalist, so it's not really surprising he'd get it right on switchgrass. If Steyn wants to complain about corn ethanol, that's fine and I'll support him on it. But he should not blame all biofuels for the problems with corn ethanol. And he certainly shouldn't blame biofuels for the current food crisis. He should blame himself for voting for George Bush's weak dollar policy. And, unless he's a vegetarian, he should blame himself for eating meat. And I should listen to my own words and cut down on my meat consumption.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Pennsylvania Primary
I've been pretty light on the posting, but I am determined to predict nearly all of the primaries. I did miss the all important Wyoming Republican primary and I'm not predicting territorial or ex-pat primaries. Except for Puerto Rico, of course, which counts for more than Oregon despite not being able to vote in the General Election. Really. But I won't have a perfect attempt record. I do know I've attempted more primaries than Zogby. And I'm sure I've been more accurate.
As for Pennsylvania, Clinton wins by 6%. I thought Obama would catch her in six weeks, but apparently not. Pennsylvania is a pretty interesting state, both in the primary and the general. Of course, it rarely factors into the primaries. So, I really wonder about the polling. It's a lot harder to predict what a "likely voter" would be when turnout is expected to quadruple. And I think that says a lot about why the polling has been all over the map despite the pollsters being there for so long. Pennsylvania's history of irrelevance and corresponding low turnout in the primaries makes extrapolation of previous data to this election difficult. And I think the trend of Obama outperforming the polls still holds, but less so. Which is why I'm going on the low side of the spreads.
Some things to watch:
The Margin: Obviously. Clinton's campaign is becoming increasingly quixotic. But she won't even think about ending her campaign unless she loses by 10%. For what it's worth, Chris Mathews says she needs an 8% win. I don't see her going anywhere without a 15% win, followed by a 5% win in Indiana. And highly favorable rule changes on Michigan and Florida. And 30% wins in Puerto Rico, Kentucky, and West Virginia. And so on....
Bucks County: This is a traditional Republican county that has recently become very competitive. Polling there is very inconclusive, both for the primary and general elections. It's not really so much of an indicator of anything, but more a measure of what's really going on in Bucks county. Which is not clear.
Update: Well, Hillary not only won, but she beat the spread too. But she's like a 2-6 NFL team at midseason that just won their 3rd game. She's kept herself alive, but she didn't do anything to change the nearly insurmountable odds against her. But I think she's moved ahead of John Edwards now to become the third most likely candidate to win the nomination. She needs a convention floor fight to win, and I'd still favor Al Gore over Hillary to win that fight. I'm starting to think that on Inauguration Day, we will be in a four-way court battle between McCain, Bush, Obama, and Clinton over who should be president. I think the courts will call it for McCain. And, no, it doesn't matter what the actual legal issues are, they'll call it for McCain. As John Yoo has proved, legal arguments can be reversed depending on which side you want to win.
As for Pennsylvania, Clinton wins by 6%. I thought Obama would catch her in six weeks, but apparently not. Pennsylvania is a pretty interesting state, both in the primary and the general. Of course, it rarely factors into the primaries. So, I really wonder about the polling. It's a lot harder to predict what a "likely voter" would be when turnout is expected to quadruple. And I think that says a lot about why the polling has been all over the map despite the pollsters being there for so long. Pennsylvania's history of irrelevance and corresponding low turnout in the primaries makes extrapolation of previous data to this election difficult. And I think the trend of Obama outperforming the polls still holds, but less so. Which is why I'm going on the low side of the spreads.
Some things to watch:
The Margin: Obviously. Clinton's campaign is becoming increasingly quixotic. But she won't even think about ending her campaign unless she loses by 10%. For what it's worth, Chris Mathews says she needs an 8% win. I don't see her going anywhere without a 15% win, followed by a 5% win in Indiana. And highly favorable rule changes on Michigan and Florida. And 30% wins in Puerto Rico, Kentucky, and West Virginia. And so on....
Bucks County: This is a traditional Republican county that has recently become very competitive. Polling there is very inconclusive, both for the primary and general elections. It's not really so much of an indicator of anything, but more a measure of what's really going on in Bucks county. Which is not clear.
Update: Well, Hillary not only won, but she beat the spread too. But she's like a 2-6 NFL team at midseason that just won their 3rd game. She's kept herself alive, but she didn't do anything to change the nearly insurmountable odds against her. But I think she's moved ahead of John Edwards now to become the third most likely candidate to win the nomination. She needs a convention floor fight to win, and I'd still favor Al Gore over Hillary to win that fight. I'm starting to think that on Inauguration Day, we will be in a four-way court battle between McCain, Bush, Obama, and Clinton over who should be president. I think the courts will call it for McCain. And, no, it doesn't matter what the actual legal issues are, they'll call it for McCain. As John Yoo has proved, legal arguments can be reversed depending on which side you want to win.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The Mountaintop
I have little to say about this. But watch it.
"I may not get there with you." More poignant words were never spoken. He was killed the next day.
"I may not get there with you." More poignant words were never spoken. He was killed the next day.
Dith Pran
I've been busy and didn't have time to write about this. But Dith Pran died over the weekend. You can read the NY Times obituary here. I'm sure nearly all of you have seen the movie "The Killing Fields," so I'm not going to say much about Mr. Dith's life. Except to say this: Dith Pran was lucky. I don't mean to make light of the horrors he endured, he certainly had a very rough life. But his life had a happy, Hollywood-ready ending. Few people in Cambodia can say the same. Nearly everyone had a member of their nuclear family killed (as did Dith Pran), and everyone who wasn't a member of the Khmer Rouge spent time in a forced labor camp. But Dith Pran avoided the aftermath and escaped to America, where he lived a life most Cambodians can only dream of. He most certainly deserves credit for his unceasing effort to expose the subsequent genocides that have occurred around the world and to give a voice to the victims. We should all be grateful for his efforts. He was a great man, but he was still lucky.
Just so you understand, I'll tell the story of another lucky person named Phannak (I don't remember his family name). I met Phannak in Phnom Penh. He managed the hotel I stayed at and we spent a lot of time together. I've heard many stories from Cambodians about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge rule and subsequent Vietnamese occupation. They are all strikingly similar. But what makes Phannak's story so striking to me is that Phannak and I were both born in April of 1968. So when I was hearing his story, I was constantly comparing my life to his and thinking about how grateful I was to have lived my life instead of his. Phannak wasn't as lucky as Dith Pran, but he was luckier than most Cambodians.
Phannak grew up in a rural village west of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge didn't reach his village for about six months after the takeover. His family was pretty well educated and owned books, which would surely result in their death. But they had advanced warning of the KR's arrival, so they burned their books, destroyed their identifications, and left their village. Two days later, the Khmer Rouge arrived at the village and killed everyone, including nearly all of Phannak's extended family. Phannak, his parents, and his brother managed to avoid the KR for six months, but they were eventually caught and taken to a holding facility. The next morning, Phannak awoke to find that his family was gone. So this seven year old child was forced to face the KR on his own. It was Khmer Rouge policy to separate all family members and take them to separate work camps. Phannak was the taken to a forced labor camp, where he spent the next 32 months of his life. Being a young child he was given fairly easy work. He guided water buffaloes to plow the rice fields. Luckily, his camp was one of the earliest to liberated by the Vietnamese army.
But the story doesn't end there. I had previously thought that the liberation must have been similar to what the victims of Auschwitz must have experienced, but that's not the case. The victims of Auschwitz must have been very happy to see the Americans arrive. And the Americans certainly treated those victims with the utmost care and empathy. But in Cambodia, the Vietnamese were long time enemies and seeing them arrive was hardly a cause for joy. And the Vietnamese did nothing to help them. All they did was open the gates and tell the Cambodians to leave. The Cambodians were so stunned that they didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to go and many stayed for days. When it became clear that the Vietnamese wouldn't give them any food, they left.
And they wandered, looking for their loved ones. When they reached a village, they would check the message boards and leave their own messages. There were two kinds of message boards. One kind was a list of everyone known to have been killed. If you knew someone was dead, you added their name to that board. The other kind was for the living. You listed who you were, what family members you were traveling with, what villages you'd been to, and where you were going to next. These message boards allowed people to reunite with their families. Phannak's job was relatively easy. He already knew that most of his relatives had been killed, and he was only looking for three people. It took about a year for Phannak, but he eventually found his remaining loved ones. He was lucky.
Phannak's family eventually returned to what was left of their village and built a new home. His parents educated him as best they could, and Phannak learned how to read and learned a little math as well. The Vietnamese occupiers made no effort to provide education, so Phannak was lucky his parents were still alive and educated. That made him a highly educated person by Cambodian standards. The Vietnamese occupation ended after eight years, and Phanak took his skills to Phnom Penh to look for work. He quickly learned English and worked as a translator for the NGO's that had come to help rebuild Cambodia. Eventually he got a job managing a hotel, the Indochine, in downtown Phnom Penh. He doesn't make much money, but what little he makes, he spends educating himself in computer technology. He hopes to someday buy a computer of his own. And someday, he hopes to marry and raise children that won't have to experience what he did. I can only wish him luck, but he has fortunately been lucky so far. And he's the first to admit it. When Phannak finished telling me his story, he added the haunting words that you hear so many times from these people: "and I was lucky." Given that 1/3 of the Cambodian population was killed by the Khmer Rouge, he really was lucky. It's hard for us to see it that way, but it's true.
Dith Pran is dead now, and we should all mourn him and be grateful for his admirable work. But Phannak lives on, and we should all be hopeful for the continued progress he and his countrymen are making. And we should never forget the horrors that happened to them. And we should be sad that such horrors continue to happen in Darfur and the Congo. And we should ask ourselves: Why do we let it go on? Not once in the history of mankind has a genocide been stopped, and that is something that really needs to change. Dith Pran tried. Now that he is dead, we all need to do more. Dith Pran would ask that of us, and so does Phannak. I offered Phannak money for his education, but he refused it. He asked that I help to ensure that others don't experience what he did. I only wish I knew how.
Just so you understand, I'll tell the story of another lucky person named Phannak (I don't remember his family name). I met Phannak in Phnom Penh. He managed the hotel I stayed at and we spent a lot of time together. I've heard many stories from Cambodians about their experiences during the Khmer Rouge rule and subsequent Vietnamese occupation. They are all strikingly similar. But what makes Phannak's story so striking to me is that Phannak and I were both born in April of 1968. So when I was hearing his story, I was constantly comparing my life to his and thinking about how grateful I was to have lived my life instead of his. Phannak wasn't as lucky as Dith Pran, but he was luckier than most Cambodians.
Phannak grew up in a rural village west of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge didn't reach his village for about six months after the takeover. His family was pretty well educated and owned books, which would surely result in their death. But they had advanced warning of the KR's arrival, so they burned their books, destroyed their identifications, and left their village. Two days later, the Khmer Rouge arrived at the village and killed everyone, including nearly all of Phannak's extended family. Phannak, his parents, and his brother managed to avoid the KR for six months, but they were eventually caught and taken to a holding facility. The next morning, Phannak awoke to find that his family was gone. So this seven year old child was forced to face the KR on his own. It was Khmer Rouge policy to separate all family members and take them to separate work camps. Phannak was the taken to a forced labor camp, where he spent the next 32 months of his life. Being a young child he was given fairly easy work. He guided water buffaloes to plow the rice fields. Luckily, his camp was one of the earliest to liberated by the Vietnamese army.
But the story doesn't end there. I had previously thought that the liberation must have been similar to what the victims of Auschwitz must have experienced, but that's not the case. The victims of Auschwitz must have been very happy to see the Americans arrive. And the Americans certainly treated those victims with the utmost care and empathy. But in Cambodia, the Vietnamese were long time enemies and seeing them arrive was hardly a cause for joy. And the Vietnamese did nothing to help them. All they did was open the gates and tell the Cambodians to leave. The Cambodians were so stunned that they didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to go and many stayed for days. When it became clear that the Vietnamese wouldn't give them any food, they left.
And they wandered, looking for their loved ones. When they reached a village, they would check the message boards and leave their own messages. There were two kinds of message boards. One kind was a list of everyone known to have been killed. If you knew someone was dead, you added their name to that board. The other kind was for the living. You listed who you were, what family members you were traveling with, what villages you'd been to, and where you were going to next. These message boards allowed people to reunite with their families. Phannak's job was relatively easy. He already knew that most of his relatives had been killed, and he was only looking for three people. It took about a year for Phannak, but he eventually found his remaining loved ones. He was lucky.
Phannak's family eventually returned to what was left of their village and built a new home. His parents educated him as best they could, and Phannak learned how to read and learned a little math as well. The Vietnamese occupiers made no effort to provide education, so Phannak was lucky his parents were still alive and educated. That made him a highly educated person by Cambodian standards. The Vietnamese occupation ended after eight years, and Phanak took his skills to Phnom Penh to look for work. He quickly learned English and worked as a translator for the NGO's that had come to help rebuild Cambodia. Eventually he got a job managing a hotel, the Indochine, in downtown Phnom Penh. He doesn't make much money, but what little he makes, he spends educating himself in computer technology. He hopes to someday buy a computer of his own. And someday, he hopes to marry and raise children that won't have to experience what he did. I can only wish him luck, but he has fortunately been lucky so far. And he's the first to admit it. When Phannak finished telling me his story, he added the haunting words that you hear so many times from these people: "and I was lucky." Given that 1/3 of the Cambodian population was killed by the Khmer Rouge, he really was lucky. It's hard for us to see it that way, but it's true.
Dith Pran is dead now, and we should all mourn him and be grateful for his admirable work. But Phannak lives on, and we should all be hopeful for the continued progress he and his countrymen are making. And we should never forget the horrors that happened to them. And we should be sad that such horrors continue to happen in Darfur and the Congo. And we should ask ourselves: Why do we let it go on? Not once in the history of mankind has a genocide been stopped, and that is something that really needs to change. Dith Pran tried. Now that he is dead, we all need to do more. Dith Pran would ask that of us, and so does Phannak. I offered Phannak money for his education, but he refused it. He asked that I help to ensure that others don't experience what he did. I only wish I knew how.
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