Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/30/2008 12:37:43 PM PDT by EPW Comm Team
Inhofe Demands ‘Dramatic’ Action to Address Food vs. Fuel Mandates
WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, delivered a floor speech today calling for “dramatic” action to address global food difficulties caused in part by current biofuel mandates.
“I come to the floor today to demand two dramatic and necessary actions to help mitigate our current biofuel policy blunder,” Senator Inhofe said. “First, Congress must revisit the recently enacted biofuel mandate, which can only be described as the most expansive biofuel mandate in our nation’s history. The mandates were part of last year’s Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Congress must have the courage to address this issue and address it now.
“Second, the EPA has the congressionally-given authority to waive all or portions of these food-to-fuel mandates as part of its rule-making process. The EPA must thoroughly review all options to alleviate the food and fuel disruption of the 2007 Energy Bill biofuel mandates.
Selected Senator Inhofe Speech Excerpts:
We are in the midst of global food difficulties brought on by decades of misguided environment and energy policies. As worldwide food availability decreases and prices continue to skyrocket, decades of ill-conceived planning by politicians and bureaucrats afraid of expanding our energy supplies are now bearing an ugly fruit. American families and the international community continue to suffer from these misguided policies; Washington must take the first steps to begin addressing these problems. […]
Recently, the world has been confronted with irrefutable evidence that our current biofuels mandates are having massive and potentially life threatening consequences. Once again, we are reminded how restrictive government mandates and ill-advised bureaucratic meddling produce unintended consequences. Trying to centrally manage and “plan” a global food distribution network and economy through clumsy, unrealistically high mandates has been a proven failure. An April 28 article on our current biofuel mandates in the National Review by Phil Kerpen and James Valvo detailed the mindset of bureaucratic planners. “Each new generation of central planners believes the previous generation wasn't smart enough. Yet central economic planning is forever doomed to failure since the approach itself limits human freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and innovation.” To put it into simpler terms: As Ronald Reagan once said, ‘The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.’ […]
Now when you have Lester Brown, Miles O’Brien, Dan Rather, Time Magazine, the New York Times, the United Nations, and James Inhofe all in agreement on changing an environmental policy, you can rest assured the policy is horribly misguided. All of these publications and individuals now realize the pure folly of the Federal government’s biofuels mandates. […]
A large auto manufacturer has erected a billboard for their line-up of so-called eco-friendly cars that run on ethanol that is currently being prominently displayed not far from the U.S. Capitol. This advertisement asks a simple question:
“WHY DRILL FOR FUEL WHEN YOU CAN GROW IT?”
A politically correct question to which the auto company’s marketing team must have thought was an obvious answer.
Let me allow world leaders, mainstream media outlets, the UN, and former believers in mandated government standards to further answer the billboard’s marketing campaign in no uncertain terms.
“WHY DRILL FOR FUEL WHEN YOU CAN GROW IT?”
The Answer:
"When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” India's finance minister said, earlier this month. [...]
Once again, I call on Congress to revisit the recently enacted biofuel mandate. Congress must have the courage to address this issue and address it now. Second, the EPA must exercise its congressionally-given authority to waive all or portions of these food-to-fuel mandates as part of its rule-making process. The EPA must thoroughly review all options to alleviate the food and fuel disruption of the 2007 Energy Bill biofuel mandates. Washington must act now.
To read Senator Inhofe's full speech go to:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=9af0d4fb-802a-23ad-4d12-920136f25450
The senator is a true conservative on many things.
You can hear the leftist backlash already, can’t you?
“Oh, Inhofe is a shill for big oil.”
All falling on deaf ears, of course.
...and with common sense. I just wish McQueeg had some.
Those ears aren’t deaf, they’re elitist, in an evil way.
Their goal is to reduce our standard of living. That’s the whole point behind the greenie weenies crusade.
Reduce everyone’s standard of living to preserve resources for the elite to use.
Good for him!! Al Gore’s food-for-gas program is a disaster for humanity.
Wonder how much oil is exported that could be stopped so that the demands of our own people would be met without raising prices?
And will someone please tell me WHY we don’t have 40 or more NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS under construction in this country RIGHT NOW and 50 more being permitted on the fast track??
Thank you Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the rest of the econazis!
These same folks are probably Francophiles,
and France has more nuke plants than we do.
I love him. He’s the one senator I hope never retires.
The rats are very nervous about this issue. Senator Durbin made some concessions about negative consequences of biofuel mandates this week. However, he did not advocate dropping the mandates, just some general caution about the wisdom of the mandates. Expect to hear more caution but of course no action during the election buildup. It is unfortunate that Bush and many Republicans supported the 2007 Energy Act with the ridiculous increase in biofuel mandates (along with other ridiculous mandates). Now is the time for conservatives to take a hardline against this madness.
The $150 Billion we are mailing out to ‘stimulate the economy’...
I wonder how many nuclear plants we could have built with that $150 BB....30?? 40??
THAT would stimulate the economy...
The counter: Starve the poor. Use ethanol.
Inhofe is right on Global Warming and way off the beam on this one.
And to keep us dependent on them for whats left, which won’t be much.
It's more than just corn and what people don't realize is that you can't really kick up productivity, an increase in product “X” so it can be fermented as fuel is a zero sum game with other crops, such as most wheat used in foods...... The corn mess has affected us several times over and it should go down in history books of what results government meddling in free economic systems driven by supply and demand causes. You have Biodiesel with over 6 million tons of output three years ago and rapidly growing. That's the actual fuel amount, now consider how much was required to get to that, and how many millions of acres of land that is that's burning in some “green” car! While Brazil produces 422 million tons of sugar cane (also fields that could grow something else), most being processed to fuel (A great idea by the gumbermint), our great and fearless leaders with their omniscient and omnipotent visionaries look there and want to emulate stupidity. "Look, they're a country burning their food, maybe we too can do that!" It fits into the regenerative, bio, get off our "addiction to oil" agenda. When a government “sticks” their nose into things and meddles, seldom is the outcome good. There is no doubt about it, nationally as well as internationally, the massive push for bio fuels (largely subsidized and mandated by laws in all these places from the US to Germany or Brazil) has opened up a large problems elsewhere, rising food prices. But maybe we can blame some other boogieman, since green = good.
Radically changing the rules of the game after spring planting might have even worse consequences than what is already anticipated, given the high cost of inputs such as fuel and fertilizer. So, I’d suggest being very careful with anything “dramatic” right now.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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