Thursday, March 13, 2008

Food security - biofuel madness.

The blog EU referendum has an interesting piece on "Food Security the coming crisis".

The NY Times also writes "A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill "

“Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,”said Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource Company, a Chicago consultancy. “But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.
Food prices are rising sharply and fast, already causing difficulties, especially to the poor people in the world ... A tailor in Lagos, Nigeria, named Abel Ojuku said recently that he had been forced to cut back on the bread he and his family love.


Yet the governments of the EU and US continue with their totally insane policy of biofuel and ethanol mandates. Currently biofuels provide some 5% of automotive fuel, but under existing mandates, they should rise to 20% within a decade.
It won't happen. There simply isn't enough land and agricultural resources (water, fertilizers ) to provide the food we need, let alone biofuel.

Global Warming hasn't caused any tangible damage yet (and is unlikely to, in the future), but global warming hysteria is already harming the hungry people of the world today (not in 2050).
While we debate whether temparatures have risen by some 0.6 deg Celsius over the last hundred years, and whether they are going to rise by another degree or two in the next hundred years - food prices have risen by 40-60% in the last year alone, and that's a fact, not a prediction based on models.

The governments should reverse course, fast, and strictly prohibit the burning of any agricultural products (biofuel, ethanol) as fuel.


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