Wheat and dairy prices are soaring (I’m coming from a U.S. perspective) thanks to Washington’s political decision to wean farmers off growing crops for human consumption and push them towards growing crops for fuel consumption. Put a seed in the ground in Iowa and up comes a tax break.

Biofuels were never really about global warming, but about energy security. Forget economics and think politics. A map of economic growth in the United States shows crisis on the (Democrat-voting) coasts but generally healthy expansion in the traditionally Republican Midwest.

Things may get better with a new administration, but maybe not. All three major candidates dismiss a simple carbon tax in favor of complicated solutions that might have all sorts of unintended consequences. It might be best to stock up on long-life milk. In a few years’ time we might look back and fondly recall how cheap it was in 2008.