Green Policies, Not Global Warming, Push the World’s Poor from Hunger to Starvation

In what could be the lead up to a repeat of the food riots that shook the world four years ago and contributed to the collapse of governments in North Africa and the Middle East, the global food price index shot up 6 percent in the single month of July, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, partly because of high temperatures and droughts in some grain-growing regions of the United States and Russia. Corn prices rose 23 percent, wheat 19 percent, and sugar 12 percent.

The consequence? Many of the world’s poorest people, who teeter on the verge of starvation, will be pushed over the edge.

As if on cue, environmentalists are up in arms. They claim the heat and drought result from manmade global warming and so blame the problem on carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels that provide energy for industrial civilization, which they insist means we must make drastic cuts in CO2 emissions—despite the fact that doing so will cause energy prices to skyrocket, raising the cost of living for everyone while killing millions of jobs.

But:

Contrary to claims that last month was the hottest July on record for the U.S., it likely was the third-hottest (behind 1936 and 1934) in a record that goes back only 100 years.
There’s been no statistically significant increase in average global temperature in 12 to 17 years despite continued increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, indicating CO2 is not the main driver of global temperature.
The heat waves and droughts in the U.S. and Russia cannot be attributed to changes in global temperature but fall well within the bounds of what’s to be expected by mere random variation.

The truth is that heat waves and droughts occur from time to time naturally; this year’s are no worse than many over the millennia; and anything that, like them, shrinks grain harvests will raise food prices around the world.

The rise in food prices therefore cannot properly be blamed on global warming, whether manmade or not—even whether real or imaginary.

But part of the high food prices can be blamed on one policy to prevent global warming. The diversion of about half of the U.S. corn crop from food to ethanol, because of federal mandates supported by environmentalists and agro-industry lobbyists, artificially restricts world grain supply, thus pushing up the price.

How much harm does that do? Economist Indur Goklany estimates that American biofuel policy from 2004 onward has resulted in an average of 192,000 excess premature deaths among the poor every year in the developing world.

It’s policies like these—not burning fossil fuels to provide abundant, affordable, reliable energy—that threaten people around the world. And such policies get the support of radical environmentalists, who not only put nature above human beings but also promote bad and sometimes fraudulent science to scare people into embracing such destructive policies.

The Cornwall Alliance needs your financial support to help us counter these deadly policies and the false environmentalist claims that promote them. Please prayerfully consider donating today at our secure online giving site. Your gift of $25, $50, $100, or more can help us spread the truth about the environment and man’s role in it through newspaper columns, talk show guest appearances, providing expert testimony to Congressional committees, and outstanding research papers like The Cost of Good Intentions: The Ethics and Economics of the War on Conventional Energy.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

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The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation seeks to magnify the glory of God in creation, the wisdom of His truth in environmental stewardship, the kindness of His mercy in lifting the needy out of poverty, and the wonders of His grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ. A coalition of theologians, pastors, ministry leaders, scientists, economists, policy experts, and committed laymen, the Cornwall Alliance is the world’s leading evangelical voice promoting environmental stewardship and economic development built on Biblical principles. The Cornwall Alliance is a 501(c)3 non-profit religious, charitable, and educational organization. All gifts are tax deductible.