A Quote by Michael Pollan

It's estimated that about 30 percent of the increase in grain prices could be attributed to the decision to embrace biofuels, particularly corn-based ethanol. It has done nothing for climate change and the business is in real trouble now with the collapse of oil prices. It's completely dependent on a dollar subsidy and tariff from the government.

Michael Pollan

Quote Topics

About Attributed Based Biofuels Business Change Climate Climate Change Collapse Corn Could Decision Dependent Dollar Done Embrace Ethanol Government Grain Increase Nothing Now Oil Oil Price Oil Prices Particularly Percent Prices Real Subsidy Tariff Trouble

Quote Author

Michael Pollan
American - Educator

It's the embrace of corn-based ethanol that has driven up all food prices. It's not making agriculture more sustainable.

Michael Pollan

High prices can be the result of speculation, and maybe plunging prices can be attributed to the end of speculation, but low prices over time aren't caused by speculation. That's oversupply, mainly by Saudi Arabia flooding the market with low-priced oil to discourage rival oil producers, whether it's Russian oil or American fracking.

Michael Hudson

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don't riot when oil prices rise.

Robert Kiyosaki

In 1973, America imported 30 percent of its crude oil needs. Today, that number has doubled to more than 60 percent. Gas prices are as high as they are now in part because we've had no comprehensive national energy policy for the past few decades.

Gary Miller

Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.

James Surowiecki

There is no such thing as agflation. Rising commodity prices, or increases in any prices, do not cause inflation. Inflation is what causes prices to rise. Of course, in market economies, prices for individual goods and services rise and fall based on changes in supply and demand, but it is only through inflation that prices rise in aggregate.

Peter Schiff

You know, oil prices from 2007, on the strength of a very robust global economy and a very robust emerging China, many of you will recall, ramped up to near $150 a barrel. Then we had the financial - U.S. financial collapse. Oil prices collapsed all the way down to $40 a barrel.

Rex Tillerson

Certain food-based biofuels like biodiesel have always been a bad idea. Others like corn ethanol have served a useful purpose and essentially are obsoleting themselves.

Vinod Khosla

Exporting oil would not drive up prices at the pump. American drivers buy refined products, which the U.S. already exports. Many studies - from a range of institutions and government agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office and the Energy Information Administration - have shown that lifting the export ban could actually lower gas prices.

Harold Hamm

When Texans suffered from the collapse of the oil market in the 1980s, they could rely on the fiscal union to help them. When Texas boomed with rising oil prices in the 2000s, it contributed to the union to help harder hit regions.

Austan Goolsbee

Renewable biofuels are meanwhile making inroads in the transportation fuels market and are beginning to have a measurable impact on demand for petroleum fuels, contributing to a decline in oil consumption in the United States in particular starting in 2006... The 93 billion liters of biofuels produced worldwide in 2009 displaced the equivalent of an estimated 68 billion liters of gasoline, equal to about 5 percent of world gasoline production.

Christopher Flavin

The significant collapse of oil prices shows that it was previously way too high.

Wolfgang Schauble

But It doesn't make sense for us to have a continued reliance on a supply of oil where whenever there is unrest in another part of the world, gasoline prices jump up. We need a renewable fuel industry that's more than corn-based, of course, and there are a whole series of great opportunities here.

Tom Vilsack

I don't think the market can keep going up. In the U.S., we see real estate not going up.. houses are selling at lower prices. You can't have anything going up 10 percent to 20 percent to 30 percent indefinitely.