Let Them Eat Mud Cookies

This morning in Prairie Country, the usual parade of honkin’ big Hummers and SUVs bearing one parent-one child were on their way to the school we pass by daily. This being Country, there’s plenty of talk around here about energy costs, and are those out in the western oil patch a getting a fair price for their crude, and should we build a refinery…hey, we have our own state-owned bank and state-owned mill. That’s us, a little bit Red State, a little bit shhhhh “socialist.”

Will there be a surge in gas prices again this spring? Will it hit $4 a gallon? How’s that going to affect the farmers growin’ for biodiesel? Yeah, there’s a whole lotta talk about energy around here.

This day in Haiti, mothers will be making mud cookies to feed themselves to keep from starving. Yes, “cookies” made from dirt, a bit of shortening, and water. Think about that the next time you’re bellyin’ up to the drive-thru lane at McDonalds…or belly-achin’ about the high costs you pay for grapes this time of year, or the cost of gas at the pumps.

The local daily, part of a network of family owned newspapers, published the same story as you’ll find at the link to National Geographic News. Funny thing, though. Apparently they figured we readers couldn’t understand the story without a third of a page photo of the “cookies.” Unfortunately, something had to be cut…and for them it was the section about the impact of Big Oil prices on food in the Caribbean.

So for any readers out there who live in Prairie Country, here’s what you missed:

Food Prices Up

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation, and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places. [Credit: Associated Press]

For too long we’ve been led around by a business philosophy that neatly—for themselves—looks at the quick fix, short term profit numbers and ignores the real costs of doing business. And that’s not just about people starving because their food costs are too high because Big Oil is profiteering from their puppet in the White House. Remember, it was George himself who described the “haves and the have-more’s” as his base. He should’ve called ’em the Vampire Capitalists that they are. Sucking the lifeblood from people literally and economically.

These guys are feeding off themselves, though, too. And that’s the bitter pill that will ultimately catch up on all of us unless something changes. While poverty festers around the globe, the fat hogs of Big Oil and the Tweetymedia, which divert attention from reality with American Idol-style tracking of political campaigns, take away from what could be savvy business for the long term.

Bring people up out of poverty, here and abroad, and you create a global population of consumers who can afford to buy your products. Sustain the planet with wise use of resources and innovative technologies, and you can begin to reach out to the stars…literally, not just in nostalgic replays of “one small step for mankind….” Or the latest sequel to Star Trek.

We lost the hemp industry to timber lobbying crying crocodile tears about marijuana menace—a big lie, and now renewable crops/agricultural income are lost. Vast swaths of timber are razed to make paper that crumbles into dust within short years while the air breathes a little harder without the trees’ recirculating power.

The cycle repeats itself now with Big Oil with its grotesque profits and still we subsidize and the President holds hands with the subsidizers of those who have already tumbled our Twin Towers and want to do worse.

At the end of the day, all these issues are interwoven. There is no energy policy without impact on food. There is no trade policy without impact on the pockets of Main Street and no street.

The president’s favorite philosopher said: whatsoever ye do to the least of my brethren. And Do Unto Others. So, how’s that Stewardship of the Planet thing workin’ out?

Yesterday was a disappointing day because John Edwards suspended his presidential bid. But my disappointment is tempered with the fervent hope that the Vampire Capitalists out there—and the politicians and media who harbor them—will have a lot more to fear from John Edwards, the proven champion already, as Paladin fighting poverty than as President sitting in the Oval.