Obama's Green Ethanol Bureaucrats Starve The Poor

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Politics: At what point does environmental zeal descend into inhumane policy? Try the ethanol mandate, which is now creating a wave of state-sponsored hunger in poor countries like Guatemala as food is diverted to fuel.

In a buried item in Saturday's New York Times, Elisabeth Rosenthal reported that growing demand for biofuels in the U.S. is having a catastrophic impact on the small poor nations south of our border, such as Guatemala.

The problem is not the usual suspect of the past — local socialist policies — but the socialism going on up north called the ethanol mandate, which has resulted in 44% of U.S. corn crops getting burned as fuel.

That may sound good to a U.S. environmentalist, given that ethanol has been marketed as a "green" energy, but to a tiny nation like Guatemala, it's a disaster.

Corn forms the staple of the meager Guatemalan diet, and also serves to sustain its livestock. Ever since 2005, Guatemala has become an importer of U.S. food.