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May 5, 2008

US, EU Asked To Rethink Biofuel Goals As Food Prices Soar

Topics: Climate Change

What started out as a great idea to some - replacing our dependence on oil with a renewable clean-burning resource - biofuel, has quickly turned into a near-unmitigated disaster. Those of us that use our brains, common sense and facts knew better, but the liberal progressives of the left that use emotion instead of brains fell hook "lyin" and sinker for the biofuels craze pushed by the Gore-led global warming cult. Unfortunately, the craze quickly spread to our politicians here in the U.S. along with the UK and the UN. Now we're in a hell of a mess. We're diverting the land we have available to produce food crops to land used exclusively for biofuel production - essentially deciding to burn our food supply in attempts to replace our oil fix:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The U.S. and European Union should reconsider a shift to biofuels that has helped increase food prices worldwide by turning agricultural land over to energy crops, American economist Jeffrey Sachs said Monday.

Targets to produce more fuels that release less carbon dioxide when burned "do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition," Sachs, a special adviser to the United Nations, told reporters before he spoke to EU lawmakers at the European Parliament.

"In the United States, as much as one-third of the maize crop this year will go to the gas tank and this is a huge blow to the world food supply, so these programs should be cut back significantly," he said.

Top international food scientists recommended last month that the use of food-based biofuels, such as ethanol, be halted, saying that would cut corn prices by 20 percent during a world food crisis.

So far, the U.S. biofuel program has had more impact on food shortages, but Europe's plans to rapidly boost biofuel output in coming years would also start to bite, Sachs said.

"Neither of them makes much sense actually in terms of the environmental effect, the energy balance, or the food impact, so I would advocate a reconsideration of both under the new market conditions," he said.

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As Krystal Ford offers at UCSH: ""We are in the middle of a worldwide food crisis that won't be disappearing anytime soon. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says that the problem is caused by "high oil prices, growing demand, bad trade policies, bad weather, panic buying and speculation, and the new craze of using food for production of biofuels."" However, we can do something about the biofuels issue now. We're all facing a major crisis that we allowed the environmentalists and our politicians to put us in to, and we need to do something about it - now. This includes eliminating the subsidy to farmers that is used to encourage them to plant biofuel crops instead of food crops, while eliminating the 50 cents a gallon tax on Brazilian ethanol which is made from sugar cane.

Related:
Global Backlash Building Against Biofuels
Blame The Environmentalists, A Hoax-swallowing Congress, And A Hoax-swallowing President, For Rising Food Prices
U.N. Expert: Food Crisis 'A Silent Tsunami'

Posted by Abdul at May 5, 2008 8:59 PM

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Comments

Posted by: reliapundit - the astute blogger at May 5, 2008 9:38 PM

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