by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
According to a report by the World Bank the run for biofuels in the developed world has caused food prices to increase by 75% worldwide.
Anyone who had the idea that biofuels, like ethanol or bio-diesel, made from corn, soy, or rapeseed are going to solve our energy problems, better think again.
Even if biofuels alleviate the energy headaches of the West, at the moment their cultivation has left populations around the globe starving.
The Guardian newspaper of Britain got hold of a secret World Bank report that found the U.S. and the EU are directly responsible for the current critical shortage of rice and other grains around the world, forcing food prices up by 75 percent by diverting grain away from food cultivation and into biofuels.
The Bush administration had the World Bank report suppressed and, no doubt, neither the British government not the European Union are going to be very happy about the fact that it is now in the public domain.
Already food riots have broken out this year in Mexico, Indonesia, Morocco, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal, Yeman, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Egypt, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, India, and Somalia.
To recap let's put the food/fuel issue in perspective – it takes more than the amount of maize that is required to feed the average African FOR A YEAR to make enough fuel to fill ONE SINGLE AMERICAN MOTOR VEHICLE TANK JUST ONE TIME.
This is not something that can be called sustainable but sustainable they want to call it. This is greenwashing at its highest. We must not and cannot look to those fuels to “save” us. We must get away from the use of the infernal combustion engine, once and for all.
The EU and the UK government must get away from their silly notion of a sustainable fuel policy using biofuels. It does not work and is not sustainable.
While the use of wood for electricity generating plants is one thing that must be considered biofuels, whether ethanol or biodiel, unless the latter is from waste cooking oils or other such waste oils, should be abandoned now, once and for all. In the countries of South-East Asia the cultivation of palm oil for biodiesel is destroying valuable habitat and making the Orangutan homeless and by doing so in fact killing the species in the wild. All this just so that some in the developed world can continue their love affair with the gas guzzling motor cars and trucks. We must rethink and reevaluate our ways and our impact on the environment and also our impact on others that share this planet with us, whether other human beings or animals, fish, birds and plants.
© M Smith (Veshengro), August 2008
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Biofuels Caused Food Prices to Soar 75% World Bank says
