Granma: More than three billion people in the world condemned to premature death from hunger and thirst

THAT is not an exaggerated figure, but rather a cautious one. I have meditated a lot on that in the wake of President Bush's meeting with U.S. automobile manufacturers.
The sinister idea of converting food into fuel was definitively established as an economic line in U.S. foreign policy last Monday, March 26
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I believe that reducing and moreover recycling all motors that run on electricity and fuel is an elemental and urgent need for all humanity. The tragedy does not lie in reducing those energy costs but in the idea of converting food into fuel.
It is known very precisely today that one ton of corn can only produce 413 liters of ethanol on average, according to densities. That is equivalent to 109 gallons.
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Some people will be asking themselves why I am talking of hunger and thirst. My response to that: it is not about the other side of the coin, but about several sides of something else, like a die with six sides, or a polyhedron with many more sides.
I refer in this case to an official news agency, founded in 1945 and generally well-informed about economic and social questions in the world: TELAM. It said, and I quote:

"In just 18 years, close to 2 billion people will be living in countries and regions where water will be a distant memory. Two-thirds of the world's population could be living in places where that scarcity produces social and economic tensions of such a magnitude that it could lead nations to wars for the precious `blue gold.'

"Over the last 100 years, the use of water has increased at a rate twice as fast as that of population growth.

"According to statistics from the World Water Council, it is estimated that by 2015, the number of inhabitants affected by this grave situation will rise by 3.5 billion people.        ...

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland