Biofuel and Blather ... more on the Food Crisis

Here's a short item from the good folks at DeSmogBlog the environmentalist website. Among other efforts postings have taken aim at the climate "denial" industry, those people who think that anthropogenic climate problems are still "in flux" within the scientific community. In particular DeSmoggers have come out against the idea that recent increases in the price of food are solely due to increased demand by India and China. It is true that demand for petroleum in those large populations combined with state subsidies has pushed up the price of a barrel to the current high levels, but that's not necessarily an explanation for the food crisis. However I am getting a little sick of hearing about that narcissistic leftover from the Clinton years, Al Gore trying to take credit for current environmental debates. I haven't seen his film but here is a review from someone who has. But I liked the cut against Rex Murphy the house "liberal" at CBC radio and television. This is also the guy who tried to say that the attacks against public transport in London, England (July 2005) had nothing to do with British policies in Afghanistan and Iraq...among other things. Even Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, someone not usually noted for her general sympathy towards left wing causes, had a crack at that one (although I couldn 't find a copy of her OpEd piece from that time. )


Politicians (and their media stooges) are twisting the language and misrepresenting the truth in an effort to deflect responsibility for a global food crisis that is being exacerbated by biofuel farm subsidies.

The issue dusted up last week when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture Marian Fischer Boel blamed the global food shortage on people in India and China who are shifting their diet toward meat and away from vegetables.

But the facts get in the way: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in response that grain consumption went up in the last year by just over four million tonnes in India and slightly less than seven million tonnes in China, while in the U.S. it climbed more than 33 million tonnes. And the bulk of that increase has gone into the subsidized biofuel crop - a demand that has driven corn prices in the U.S. from $2 per bushel when President George Bush began his ethanol push to $5 per bushel today.

In Canada, where production of biofuel has tripled since 2003, the federal government - which has been otherwise resistant to any policy that might address climate change - has tried to paint the new farm subsidy as an environmental gesture.

"Good for the environment and good for farmers," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said as he announced a $1.5-billion ecoENERGY plan last summer to get more ethanol and biodiesel pouring into Canadian gas tanks. "Our government's investment in biofuels is a double win."

But the spin gets worse. In the same story that included the above quote, Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, calls criticism of the diversion of foodcrops to biofuels, "intellectually dishonest."

Quaiattini says biofuels have nothing to with growing world hunger, that there is plenty of food to go around. The problem, he says, is the world's poorest citizens can no longer afford to buy rice, corn and wheat.

Unable - or unwilling - to connect the rising price driven by his own industry to affordability in the developing world, Quaiattini instead tries to blame the whole thing on rising oil prices, which are certainly a consideration, but a minor one compared to the competitive effect of tens of millions of tonnes of food being diverted to make a "green" energy source that is not even very green.

The push for biofuel is nothing short of a huge farm subsidy, a traditional corporate boondoggle that is putting unforgivable pressure on global food stocks.

More unforgivable yet, however, is the cheap political points that some people are trying to score as a result. For example, Rex Murphy, the self-styled Canadian iconoclast, cuddles up to government and corporate position makers once again, arguing (accurately) that biofuels are partly to blame for world food shortages, but then blaming, of all people, Al Gore for the whole problem.