Al Jazeera talks to Farmer Jim

You know biofuels are a force to be reckoned with when the world’s media start turning up in the rural Midwest. Record-breaking global corn prices are responsible for the attention, and this mostly because rich countries have taken to driving our food in the form of ethanol.

Al Jazeera talks to Illinois farmer Jim Robbins, and connects the dots to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where global commodity prices are set:



Not to be outdone, France 24 talks to farmers in Indiana. This segment is worth watching, if for no other reason than the sneering reporter’s accent:



Both segments highlight short-term market fluctuations driven by long-term changes in the world. Farmer Jim says:

“We’re going to need these high prices to continue, because our input costs … are going to go up, and that’s going to catch up with us.”

In other words, this is an economic bubble—froth on the sides of our transition away from fossil fuels. As France 24 points out,

“Ethanol … may only be a transitional fuel; even if the whole of the US were covered with corn fields, it would not produce enough ethanol to replace oil.”

Jeremiah and Me

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and I have a lot in common.

We’re both by nature eggheads and idealists, who’d rather talk ecclesiology than politics, and who’d rather take action than work the machines of law.

But here’s one difference: when duty called, he joined the marines, and served his country with distinction.

I, on the other hand, didn’t lift a finger. Still, his patriotism is questioned, mine is not.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is Wright, tending to his president: