Zechariah 1:15
This is a statement the prophet Zechariah wrote down that He heard God say to him. God was talking about the situation with his own people, but when I read this this morning I thought of America. Do we realize our pursuit of ethanol is contributing to food shortages in other parts of the world?
Other sources of energy is a good thing to seek out, but at the cost of lives?
My son Peter comes from the country of Russia. While I was there I spent time in only two cities: Magadan and Moscow. I was able to tour Moscow my first trip, see the Kremlin, see internationally known landmarks.
One of the Russian cities I didn't go to was St. Petersburg. Tzar Peter I, also known as Peter the Great was the founder of this city. He wanted a city built in the north. It is, from pictures and from what I've read, an impressive city.
But in the building of it 100s of 1000s of people died.
From Saint-Petersburg.com we read, "The builders of the fortress (mostly soldiers and peasants) worked in very primitive conditions, since the climate was very damp, good housing nonexistent and food in very short supply. Working from dawn to dusk, they died in great numbers . . . By August 1703 the new settlers in Peter's city had already encountered the infamous St. Petersburg floods. Due to the boggy nature of the terrain, the area was considered unhealthy for a town, but it had tremendous strategic importance, so Peter the Great continued constructing the city despite all the losses and extra expenditures . . . by 1712 it had grown enough to become the new Russian capital."
This quote makes the losses sound like no big deal, but most of those losses were people, people who were loved, people who had purpose.
I wonder about people across the world who are going hungry, people we might be able to feed. They each have a name, a purpose, people who love them.
How can we combat this?
I am not suggesting we don't produce fuel of some sort but I wonder if there is another answer?