Environmentalists to blame as emissions worsen, world's poor starve
Note to environmentalists: Remember, you were the ones who demanded biofuels the loudest.
It turns out the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel is likely to cause far more environmental damage than it prevents, not to mention triggering widespread famine and eating up more rainforest and grassland than beef production ever could.
The production and consumption of biofuels releases far more carbon emissions than are prevented when ordinary gasoline and diesel are burned without first being mixed with corn or sugar cane derivatives.
Even the world's first tentative steps towards increasing biofuel production has caused a doubling of annual deforestation rates in the Amazon.
According to Wetlands International, Indonesia has razed so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that it has moved from the world's 21st-biggest greenhouse gas emitter to third in just the past three years. Only China and the United States -- in that order -- generate more carbon emissions.
With its rapid conversion of rainforest to cane production for fuel, Brazil has slipped into fourth place.
Turns out the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by chopping down rainforests and switching grassland to corn, cane, soybean or palm oil production far exceeds that released by burning oil pumped from the ground or extracted from oilsands. The original environmental studies advocating biofuels as a way of curbing greenhouse emissions and cleaning the air hadn't taken this into consideration.
Corn-based biofuels are particularly ineffective. After the ethanol is made, the stocks must be destroyed, thereby releasing all the carbon they took up during their growth.
Then there is the biofuel revolution's impact on world food supplies.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "37 countries are currently facing food crises." The reasons are complex, ranging from rising fuel costs to floods and droughts.
Still, the great biofuel rush has been a major contributor, as well.
In just the last month, Haiti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Madagascar have suffered food riots. Even Pakistan and Mexico have witnessed unrest over food prices -- Mexico City had tortilla riots -- as grains, oilseeds and corn that once went solely to the food market are now being bid on by fuel suppliers, too. The Philippines, Uzbekistan, Bolivia and Cameroon have also had protests or street violence over food.
Again according to the FAO, the price of food staples such as rice and corn has risen 57 per cent in just the past year, driven as much as anything by the need to find feedstock for biofuel production.
In the developed world, where diets are much richer and more varied, the effect of these increases has been minimal -- maybe five to 10 per cent on a family's grocery bill. That's not easily absorbed by everyone, yet since food makes up less than a third of average family spending in industrialized countries, even a 10-per-cent increase in food would add less than three per cent to most families' cost of living.
But in the developing and underdeveloped worlds, the competition for crops from the biofuel industry has increased family food tabs by as much as half, pricing a traditional basic diet out of some families' grasp. Hence the growing number of countries with food crises. And we have only just begun to see what stresses the biofuel craze will create.
In Europe and North America, bio-
fuels make up less than five per cent of energy consumed. However, either through government edict or the desire of corporations to appear "green," biofuel consumption is projected to double or triple by 2020.
Thanks to biofuel, the World Bank projects global food costs will stay above 2004 levels until at least 2015. Expect more millions to go hungry just to satisfy the desire of industrial-world environmentalists to be seen to be saving the planet.
The sad irony, of course, is that not only is the developed world's green conscience starving the rest of the world, it's creating more environmental harm -- not less -- in the process.
Talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. But watch, in typical liberal fashion, green crusaders will look to blame someone else for their colossal error, in this case, likely, greedy corporations and conservative politicians. Indeed, the revisionism has already begun.
Time magazine, long a champion of environmentalism, recently called the biofuel craze "the clean energy scam." But who did it blame for the fraud?
Al Gore, David Suzuki and the Sierra Club? No. Biofuels, according to Time, have become "the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming."
In other words, George Bush and Big Oil are to blame.
It's true corporations are pouring $100 billion or more a year into biofuel development. Even our own federal Tories have committed $2 billion to the cause.
But whose hectoring, lobbying, advertising and scaremongering created the political pressure that has compelled politicians and executives to go "green?"
The environmental movement. That's who's behind the disaster of biofuels.
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