NOW BIOFUELS ARE A "THREAT"

As usual, nothing makes the Greenies happy. Below read the thoughts of "sustainable development" guru, Lester Brown. He has had an epiphany that the growing need for crops to create biofuels will compete with the need for crops for food. And, like any self respecting Greenie, his solution is "...an international body to oversee the biofuel/food problem." He also seems to confuse world "demand" with "production", stating that while world demand is to grow by 20 million tons and 14 million of that is for biofuel, thus leaving just six million tons to satisfy food needs.

The dreamy Mr. Brown also overlooks the most basic fact about world food supplies: The chronic problem that the word has with food supplies is SURPLUS food. That's why the governments of almost all the world's developed countries spend billions propping up their farmers. Europe has so much surplus food that they cannot even give away that they end up destroying lots of it

The surging demand for corn, sugar cane and vegetable oils to make Earth-friendlier biofuels is pitting hungry cars against hungry people, and trouble's brewing, says sustainable development pioneer Lester Brown.

Biodiesel and ethanol, both made from food crops, have been recently touted as the way to free America of its addiction to foreign oil and to stem the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But the growing demand for biofuels is beginning to adversely affect food supplies worldwide, and could eventually lead to serious economic and political instability, warned Brown, president of the World Policy Institute. "In effect what we have are 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and two billion people who want to survive," he said in a press conference on Thursday, announcing the release of a new report on the problem.

Those two billion are the same people who already spend more than half their annual income - in most cases less than $3,000 - on food, he said. The competition between corn and ethanol struck home to Brown recently, he said, as he was reading U.S. Department of Agriculture grain production numbers. "I was looking at USDA grain estimates and two numbers jumped out at me," he said. World grain demand is projected to grow by 20 million tons this year. Some 14 million tons of that demand is expected to be for biofuels for cars in the United States. That leaves just six million tons to satisfy the food needs of many countries that import U.S. grain - at a time when grain stocks are at a 34-year low and climate change and water shortages are making it harder than ever to grow grain, he said.

What's driving the demand for biofuels is the high price of oil, said Brown, which has made biofuels economically attractive. At the same time, it's becoming clear that the price of a basic staple food like corn is no longer based on its demand as a food, but also as a fuel. "Everything we eat can be converted into ethanol or biodiesel," Brown explained. "As a result, the line between the food economy and energy economy has become blurred." That means fuel prices can drive up food prices, bad news for the two billion people whose food may fetch a higher price if it fills a gas tank.

Already the world market for sugar is seeing reduced supply and rising prices because Brazil has shifted huge amounts of sugar cane from export markets to making domestic ethanol, Brown explained. Brazil is one of the world's top sugar producers. "In Europe the margarine producers are complaining because they're having difficulty getting vegetable oil because biodiesel is sucking it up," Brown noted. The problem will also affect meat, dairy and egg production, Brown pointed out, since just about all animal feed can be made into fuel. What's needed, he said, is an international body to oversee the biofuel/food problem. Right now, he noted, "in effect no one is in charge." And that, said Brown, could lead to economic instability, civil unrest and even the collapse of governments.

Brown's dire outlook is not shared by those in the ethanol fuel trade, however. "No one's saying we're going to take every kernel of corn and turn it into ethanol," said Mat Hartwig, spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, D.C. "In the fuel versus food debate it's not an either or situation. We can do both." Even individual kernels of corn can be used in both food and fuel, Hartwig explained. Corn can be processed to extract the sugars for making ethanol, leaving behind a high-protein "distiller's grain" that can then be used for animal feed, he said. "It's not as though we're taking that entire kernel out of the food process."

There is also the future prospect of cellulosic ethanol to consider, said Hartwig. That's ethanol that can be made from cellulose - the husks and other inedible parts of plants. It's harder to do, but there is a lot of investment and work going on now to make cellulosic ethanol viable by 2015, he said. As for the economic implications, so far it's been good for U.S. farmers and reduced the need for federal subsidies, said Hartwig. "This is a growing market that's creating economic activity in rural areas that are the last to feel economic up turns and the first to feel slow downs."

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FRUITCAKES AND THEIR MONEY ARE SOON PARTED

Ethical shopping may sound like the pastime of well-meaning hippies, but tell that to the boardroom. A retail revolution is underway, according to market analysts, and the trend dubbed "ethical consumerism" is now big business. According to a report by the Institute for Grocery Distribution, shoppers are increasingly prepared to pay a premium for high-quality organic, free-range or fair trade products. Even Tesco is branching out from its bulk-buy, low-cost strategy, it said.

Ethical consumerism is now worth 25 billion pounds a year in Britain, with 4 billion coming from food and drink sales. That market, while accounting for only 4 per cent of total food sales, is growing at an annual rate of 7.5 per cent - much faster than conventional groceries at 4.2 per cent. The trend is so great that Britain has been chosen to host the world's largest organic store, which will open within months in West London. The arrival of the US organics chain Whole Foods looks set to accelerate the expansion of ethical shopping. The company, which made a $136 million after-tax profit selling ethical goods to affluent Americans, is preparing to open a 75,000sq ft shop on the site of Barkers of Kensington, the 135-year-old store that closed this year.

Shopping habits in Britain are changing rapidly. Annual sales of fair trade products are worth 200 million pounds. In the US, Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has earmarked a chunk of its $570 million-plus advertising budget to promote the sale of organic foods. And Whole Foods' smaller rival, Wild Oats, generated sales of more than $1 billion last year. Independent retailers account for only a quarter of the $14 billion organic food market.

Whole Foods, founded in 1980 by John Mackey, a college dropout and vegan animal rights activist, caused uproar among American consumers last month when it stopped selling live lobsters and crabs because it believes the trade in sentient crustaceans to be inhumane. The ban did not come about overnight, however. The company spent seven months studying lobster behaviour to determine whether the animals suffered when kept in tanks. Whole Foods decided to stop selling the creatures because it could not ensure that they would be treated with respect and compassion on the journey from the Maine sea bed to the dining table. Mr Mackey said: "We place as much emphasis on the importance of humane treatment and quality of life for all animals as we do on the expectations for quality and flavour." His company has earned the nickname "the Wal-Mart of wheatgerm", and profit remains a priority despite the emphasis on ethics. Mr Mackey, 52, bought the London-based organics chain Fresh & Wild in 2004 for 21 million pounds, but he has claimed that these stores may not survive where Whole Foods outlets are opened nearby.

The Institute for Grocery Distribution believes that the ethical shopping trend is growing so fast that soon it will apply as much to toothpaste, soap and tea towels as it does to organic milk, free-range eggs and chicken and fair trade coffee and chocolate. It has even identified several types of ethical shopper. These include Showboaters, who are concerned with their middle-class image, Guerrillas, who boycott certain brands, and Lapsed Activists, who would like to do better. Julie Starck, of the institute, said: "For years retailers and manufacturers have focused on price and competing on whose is the cheapest. Shoppers may still like low prices, but now they want to be sure where the food comes from."

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POMBO ON ENDANGERED SPECIES



Rep. Richard Pombo, the Tracy Republican who heads the House Resources Committee, stirs conflict with almost every major initiative he launches, from offshore drilling to Indian gambling. Few members of Congress have as much influence over the nation's environmental laws as Pombo. And no topic has been more contentious than his legislation to overhaul the Endangered Species Act. The House approved Pombo's sweeping rewrite of the 1973 law on a 229-193 vote in September. It was widely denounced by environmentalists as a disturbing retreat from habitat protection and a paperwork nightmare for agencies seeking to revive the country's 1,268 threatened and endangered plants and animals, 186 of which are in California.

In the Senate, Pombo's bill was greeted even by Republicans with a measure of skepticism. The Bush administration, while supporting it, is worried about the cost of Pombo's plan to compensate landowners for restrictions on their property use. In an interview, Pombo discussed why he thinks the act signed into law by President Nixon needs an overhaul and how his bill would work.

Q: What are your problems with the Endangered Species Act now?

A: I didn't like the way it treated private property owners. It was heavy-handed. It didn't really matter what the facts were on the ground or what the science was. It was decisions being driven by somebody in Washington who had never even been to the area being regulated. I felt it was wrong for them to come in and tell someone who had been farming for a hundred years that you can no longer farm it any more because it was endangered species habitat. But the more I got into it, I began to realize that the act didn't work. At some point, the agency began to focus on land-use control and forgot all about recovering species. This was driven by lawsuits. (Environmentalists) would file a lawsuit on the designation of critical habitat, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would lose. As more of a defensive posture, they began focusing on designation of critical habitat and they forgot all about recovering species and whether or not the habitat that was being protected actually did anything.

Q: There have been some reports, peer reviewed, that have shown the act has been working, that species on the list 13 or more years are by and large stable or improving.

A: That's not accurate. Less than 6 percent of the species listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service will even qualify as recovering, as moving in the right direction. Nearly 40 percent of the species on the list they don't even know what their status is. It's over 70 percent of the population that is either declining in population or they have no idea.

Q: So you don't think the act is working at all?

A: I wouldn't say it hasn't worked at all. But it hasn't worked the way it should.

Q: How would your bill change it?

A: It completely changes the focus. (By) getting away from the current process of protecting habitat, what we say is that you have to adopt a recovery plan. Once you've adopted a recovery plan, whatever habitat is necessary to fulfill that is what is protected. The focus is on how we recover the species. . The other thing is that for about 90 percent of the species, at least part of their habitat is on private property. If you don't bring in private property owners, it's never going to work.

Q: The environmentalists claim your bill is just a wholesale elimination of essential habitat.

A: The funny part is the idea for doing away with critical habitat and going with recovery habitat actually came from environmental groups. When they originally brought that up during negotiations over this, I said no, we have to fix critical habitat. But the more I thought about it, I realized they were right, that that was the only way we were going to do this -- to completely do away with the current process of protecting habitat and go with something different.

Q: How would that work?

A: This is where science comes in. You identify species as endangered or threatened and you come up with a recovery team. Independent science looks at it and says this particular species needs this kind of habitat, these are the reproduction rates, this is what we have to do to get it to a sustainable population. To do that, this is the kind of habitat we need and this is how much we think we need. So all of the habitat that is protected is tied directly back in to the recovery plan.

When the red-legged frog was originally listed, (environmentalists) sued and won. So Fish and Wildlife responded with a 5 million-acre map of habitat. They just mapped any creek in Northern California and designated it as critical habitat, even if it was a dry creek bed. It had nothing to do with recovering the species. Then they got sued by developers and that 5 million acres shrunk to less than a million acres. It still has nothing to do with recovering the frog. .

(Under my bill,) you come up with a recovery team that says, 'This is what we need to do, and this is the kind of habitat we need.' You go to the property owner and say, 'Look, you've got cattle ponds that we think could be potential habitat. If we propagate frogs there, and this is how you have to manage your property to do it, we'll give you a grant or tax credit' or something that helps them. Then all of a sudden the property owner doesn't see it as a negative and you actually do something to recover the species. As it is now, the guy says, 'I might have red-legged frogs there, so I'm going to dry up that pond and water my cattle out of a trough because I don't want to lose use of my property.'

Q: It's late in the congressional session. Are you resigned to this carrying over until next session?

A: Not yet. We are still talking to the Senate. The ideas we put on the table passed overwhelmingly. Whether or not we can get this done, I'm not sure. But I am not willing to give up now.

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ESALEN: A PLACE TO FEED YOUR NARCISSISM



Named for the Esselen Indian tribe indigenous to Big Sur, the Esalen Institute is a nonprofit alternative-education center situated, not incidentally, on the edge of the Western world, looking East. The weathered redwood buildings and geodesic domes sprinkled about the grounds hearken back to the early 1960s, when Stanford graduate students Michael Murphy and Richard Price gave life to their vision of a sanctuary where thinkers of all stripes -- philosophers, psychologists, artists, academics, spiritual leaders, experientialists, you name it -- could come to pursue "the exploration of unrealized human capacities." Over the years, more than 300,000 people have indulged in the Esalen experience, the vast majority of them through personal-growth workshops, says publicist Megan McFeely.

The institute can accommodate just 120 overnight guests at a time, though as many staff members usually are on hand, including a contingent of work-study program participants who come for a month at a time. The few rooms not filled with students and instructors are made available to the public for what the institute terms "personal retreats." "It's not a hotel -- we don't encourage people to look at it that way," McFeely says. "We're not about being a spa; we're about being a place for personal transformation."

That's not to say that Esalen is lacking in sybaritic elements: There's plenty of that, as well. But the overriding impression I took away, after chatting with guests and instructors over meals and while exploring the campus, was of intellectual stimulation, not physical indulgence. The place was positively buzzing with creative energy; I could almost see the wheels turning in everybody's heads.

Not having time for a workshop, my overnight visit was on the "personal retreat" plan, from midafternoon on the first day through lunch on the second. Our room was a simple affair, very dated and '60s-ish, with weathered plywood walls, a tiny bath, sliding doors opening onto a narrow cement slab and a spectacular view of the ocean and the bathhouse directly below.

The baths have been restored

Ah yes, the baths. The mineral hot springs flowing from the side of the cliff were, until 1998, partially contained in natural rock pools and redwood tubs where Esalen guests came to soak and to tune in to the natural environment. The baths were Esalen's signature attraction, an icon of the institute's unfettered philosophies. It all crashed down in an El Ni¤o storm packing 100-mph winds and humongous sea swells. Rebuilding took three years.

The new $6 million bathhouse, anchored to bedrock, is modern in design and features indoor and outdoor soaking pools of various temperatures, as well as semiprivate pavilions and open-air areas for massage. It's all coed, and while guest literature proclaims the baths to be "clothing optional," the atmosphere is such that most people would feel more bare in a swimsuit than in a birthday suit; it really is that relaxed and natural.

At any rate, sitting in warm water up to your neck under a starry sky, with the sea pounding a lullaby on the rocks below, is a quintessential Northern California experience. Add a massage -- Esalen-style, characterized by long, sweeping strokes -- and you'll be in fine fettle to attend the free movement and meditation sessions, dance performance, arts-and-crafts classes and other activities programmed daily and open to all guests. You never know who you might encounter along the way; over the years many cultural newsmakers have contributed to the institute's intellectual stew.

Check out the guest list

In the revolutionary atmosphere of the '60s, Esalen garnered a reputation for being as far out as it got. Fritz Perls, co-founder of Gestalt therapy, made his name teaching workshops here in the early years. Psychologist B.F. Skinner, cult author Carlos Castaneda and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling led seminars, too. Singer Joan Baez was in residence for a time; gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson worked a stint as a gate-keeper. The Beatles made an appearance. So did LSD gurus Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary, beat icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and many other cultural newsmakers of the day.

In the late 1980s, Esalen was back in the spotlight again, this time for a Soviet-American exchange program whose "hot-tub diplomacy" during the Yeltsin era helped improve relations between the two Cold War superpowers.

Meanwhile, more frontier thought was percolating behind the scenes, where seminars delved into the cutting edge of everything from physics and consciousness to sports psychology, international relations, medicine, meditation, massage, environmental studies, evolutionary theory, race relations and paranormal intelligence. The human potential movement was off and running, and Esalen has remained core to the cause ever since.

Metaphysically speaking

Now in its fifth decade, the institute continues to offer an extensive, round-the-calendar schedule of more than 500 open-to-the-public workshops a year, some as straightforward as "Afro- Cuban Drum and Dance" and "Women and Aging," others as offbeat as "Spirit Medicine" and "The Mind Beyond the Brain." A separate set of invitation-only conferences focusing on topics such as metaphysics, economics and globalization is operated through the institute's Center for Theory and Research. Although programming for the public has evolved with the times (think yoga, wellness, hiking), Esalen's mission remains unapologetically high-minded. The goal, to quote from institute literature, is "to create and further approaches that will help unlock the immense reservoir of currently unused human potential and turn it to the benefit of present and future generations throughout the world." Whew. See what I mean about being hard to articulate?

Harry Feinberg, who recently took the reins as Esalen's executive director of operations, puts it in more down-to-earth terms: "The basic mission is to provide a safe environment for anyone to be able to come in and explore where they are in their own life and where they're headed," he says. "There aren't many places like that."

Nature's heartbeat

There aren't many places that enjoy such an eye-popping setting, either. Esalen's lush campus sprawls across 120 acres of a ridge-top plateau hugging the spectacular Big Sur coastline. Inland trails lead through lush forests where where streams bubble and beams of sunlight filter between towering redwoods. Expansive organic gardens provide much of the produce served in the camplike dining hall, where healthy, buffet-style meals are taken at shared tables. Evenings, the collegiate atmosphere is reinforced with late-night snacks (brownies, cinnamon rolls), a crowd around the bar and impromptu guitar-and-song sessions around a patio fireplace. The sound of the sea, Mother Nature's heartbeat, is a constant background rhythm by which this rarified world seems to turn. "What a spectacular place; it sinks right into your body experience," Feinberg said as we admired the view from a broad green sward of lawn overlooking the classic panorama.

Candles, didgeridoos: Not for all

From the moment I arrived at Esalen until the moment I left, I was struck with an almost palpable sense of having been catapulted into a bubble separate from the rest of the world. I loved it -- but not everyone would. The touchy-feely, getting-in-touch-with-yourself aspects of the overall scene probably explain why Esalen's clientele is more heavily weighted to women than to men. Being open to new experiences is a definite prerequisite.

After dinner, my female friends and I returned to the bathhouse for "didgeridoo meditation," certainly a new experience for me. Candles had been lit everywhere, and the pools, massage tables, floors and ledges were occupied by lounging guests wrapped in towels, sheets or nothing at all. A young man, accompanied by a woman on guitar, played haunting melodies on the flute-like aboriginal instrument, creating a fragile, magical ambience.

Walking back to my room, I suddenly realized I had a mile-wide grin on my face, and that I had fallen, like so many before me, under Esalen's invigorating spell. Part of it, to be sure, was a nostalgia element: I felt like I'd stumbled into my hippie-dippie past. And part of it was confirmation that idealism can be respected, that the past can have a future and that people who care really can make a difference in our world.

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The Competitive Enterprise Institute has just released a new FAQ here (PDF) on global warming, by Iain Murray. It is very readable and answers all the alarmist claims. Everything is backed up with references to the scientific literature. The FAQ addresses such important and misunderstood topics as "the scientific consensus," sea level rise, the satellite temperature record vs the surface record, the accuracy of the models, the economic assumptions behind the models, and much more. It is a concise, one stop guide to dealing with the alarmist claims.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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