http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080410.wfood0411/GIStory/
I believe we can make a difference in our enviroment, but the use of ethanol as a fuel has had consequences seemingly no one wants to discuss. Exactly how does converting food to fuel help? It makes a miniscule dent in climate change, and a huge impact in feeding people. Well these aren't just my thoughts, here is some excerpts from the hyperlinked story.
We are right now creating a food shortage that will first impact less developed poor countries, but also is impacting what you and i pay for food at the market. The ultimate impact maybe actual shortages of food not only in the less developed world but here also. A shocking quote to consider "Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year."
Fill your tank and starve someone? How could so many smart people push such a policy that it now is law in many countries, especially in the EU, where their demand for biofuel will worsen this situation? (Right about now my inner voice is screaming What The F!!!!)
The other "unforseen" impact of this rush to biofuels has been an accelration of land clearing in the Amazon basin, to create farm land from rain forest, which is good news if you like Brazilian hardwood furniture, but generally bad news if you like to breath. "The tremendous number of trees and plants that characterize the Amazon region are responsible for providing the world with as much as 20% of its oxygen." http://www.mrnussbaum.com/amazonia.htm
The rain forest is also part of the global climate weather pattern, since this green island is roughly the size of Australia. Once deforested, the thermal image changs, contributing to ...global warming. So oddly enough, as we urge the use of biofuels to reduce global warming, we hasten it. Typical human intervention; I wonder if Al Gore has thought about these consequences?
How could so many smart people push such a policy that it now is law in many countries, especially in the EU, where their demand for biofuel will worsen this situation?
Fatal food riots in Haiti. Violent food-price protests in Egypt and Ivory Coast. Rice so valuable it is transported in armoured convoys. Soldiers guarding fields and warehouses. Export bans to keep local populations from starving.
For the first time in decades, the spectre of widespread hunger for millions looms as food prices explode. Two words not in common currency in recent years — famine and starvation — are now being raised as distinct possibilities in the poorest, food-importing countries.
How did it come to this? Surging food prices, now at 30-year highs, are actually a relatively new phenomenon. In the mid-1970s, prices began to fall as the green revolution around the world made farms dramatically more productive, thanks to improvements in irrigation and the widespread use of fertilizers, mechanized farm equipment and genetically engineered crops. If there was a crisis, it was food surpluses — too much food chasing too few stomachs — and dropping produce prices had often disastrous effects on farm incomes.
They include turning food into fuel, climate change, high oil and natural gas prices (which boost trucking and fertilizer costs), greater consumption of meat and dairy products as incomes rise (which raises the demand for animal feedstuffs), and investment funds, whose billions of dollars of firepower can magnify price increases.
Driven by fears of global warming, biofuel has become big business in the U.S., Canada and the European Union. The incentive to produce the fuels is overwhelming because they are subsidized by taxpayers and, depending on the country or the region, come with content mandates.
Starting next week, Britain will require gasoline and diesel sold at the pumps be mixed with 2.5-per-cent biofuel, rising to 5.75 per cent by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with European Union directives. Ontario's ethanol-content mandate is 5 per cent. As the content requirements rise, more and more land is devoted to growing crops for fuel, such as corn-based ethanol. In the EU alone, 15 per cent of the arable land is expected to be devoured by biofuel production by 2020.
That's raising alarm bells, especially given lingering doubts about the effectiveness of ethanol in combatting climate change. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said this week he's worried that ethanol production is pushing up food prices everywhere, and he called for an urgent review of the issue. Economist Dr. Hazell has said that filling an SUV tank once with ethanol consumes more maize than the typical African eats in a year.
Rising ethanol demand is one of the main reasons why Wall Street securities firm Goldman Sachs predicts high food prices for a long time. "We believe the recent rise in agriculture prices is not a transient spike, but rather represents the beginning of a structural increase in prices, much as has occurred in the energy and metals markets," Jeffrey Currie, Goldman's chief commodities analyst, said in a research note last month.
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