Let Them Eat Ethanol

Mona Charen on Food Fight on National Review Online:

• Five people are dead in Port Au Prince, Haiti after a week of food riots.
• Unions in Burkina Faso have called a general strike to protest the high cost of grain.
• Food riots have rocked Egypt, Cameroon, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and other nations.
• In Manila, police with M-16s have supervised the sale and distribution of subsidized grain.
• Hoarders have been threatened with life imprisonment.
• In Thailand and Pakistan, troops are guarding fields and warehouses.
• In Egypt, the army has been called out to bake bread.

"In our search for cleaner energy we jumped aboard the “biofuels” bandwagon. This debacle should be an object lesson. Fighting global warming (if there is global warming) is a tricky business and can only be undertaken after careful review of the costs and benefits."