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Hugo Chavez
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A week from today 12 leaders of South American countries will meet with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to discuss the building of a 5,000 mile natural gas pipline. This pipeline would take OPEC nation’s gas reserves to South American nations, such as Argentina and Brazil. This meeting comes at a time when tensions are high with Brazil. Brazil has been cooperating with the United States to promote the use of ethanol. Chavez claims that an increase in use of ethanol will make world hunger increase. Chavez says that ethanol is not needed and that the countries participating in the conference should look for ways to reduce energy consumption. He is putting down the US calling for regional support for “anti-US politics.” Venezuela has the hemisphere’s largest oil reserves and is the 5th leading exporter of oil to the United States.
I agree with Chavez that new ways need to be developed to reduce energy consumption, but I am not sure that the way to go about it is by going against the United States. In my opinion, he is just trying to coax the regional South American countries into hating the US by offering them a natural gas pipeline to their countries. The article did not discuss much about why Chavez said that world hunger will increase with the use of ethanol and I am not quite sure what he means by that.
Article : Venezuela’s Chavez Challenges US with Energy Summit by Brian Ellsworth http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12580
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I agree with you Abby, and I think Hugo needs to take a step in to our APES class. World hunger definitely will not increase with the use of ethanol. And I think the only way to obtain an efficient and renewable energy source is for all the coountries to unite to help out in the issue and come up with something, not dispute over what should be done.
Comment by rmclean April 20, 2007 @ 9:48 pmI think I did a blog on this earlier this year and not only will the building of this pipeline increase the use of ethanol, which would then increase world hunger, but it also will greatly disrupt the environment of South America. This pipeline is 5000 miles long, so just imagine how much wildlife is being disturbed along with places where people live as well. I think they should try to come up with some other way of more efficiently transporting natural gas.
Comment by mary alice acton April 21, 2007 @ 5:05 am