Global Backlash Against Biofuels As World Hits Food Panic
The Great Global Warming Swindle is just making things worse and worse.
BRUSSELS (AFP) - The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a “crime against humanity” that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.
“There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels,” said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.
“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives,” which could see the EU landmark climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said.
Their comments came amid growing unease over the planting of biofuel crops as food prices rocket and riots against poverty and hunger multiply worldwide.
UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices.
EU leaders, seeking to show the way on global warming, have pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
As part of a package of measures the 27 member states have set a target of biofuels making up 10 percent of automobile fuel by the same year.
“We don’t have an enormous danger of too much of a shift from food production to biofuels production,” said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
Mann, like Helfferich speaking to reporters in Brussels, stressed that the 10 percent target would in part be achieved through higher yields and increased production.
Ziegler also accused the European Union of subsidising its agriculture exports with effect of undermining production in Africa.
“The EU finances the exports of European agricultural surpluses to Africa … where they are offered at one half or one third of their (production) price,” the UN official charged.
“That completely ruins African agriculture,” he added.
In recent months, rising food costs have sparked violent protests in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania, the Philippines and other countries.
In Pakistan and Thailand, troops have been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses, while price increases fuelled a general strike in Burkina Faso.
The European Environment Agency, advisors to the European Commission, on Friday recommended that the EU suspend its 10 percent biofuels target.
It argued that the target would require large amounts of additional imports of biofuels leading to the accelerated destruction of rain forests. The agency also questioned the environmental benefits of biofuels.
Also in a recent report the World Bank said bluntly “biofuel production has pushed up feedstock prices”.
Meanhwile Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, head of Nestle, the world’s biggest food and beverage company, last month argued that “to grant enormous subsidies for biofuel production is morally unacceptable and irresponsible”.
“There will be nothing left to eat,” he added.
European leaders are aware of the growing body of opinion opposed to biofuels but Dimas has stressed the use of “second generation” biofuels; including leaves, straw and pond algae.
The first generation of green fuels — biodiesel and ethanol– are made from wheat, maize, colza, sugar beet etc, also used for human and animal feed.
However, according to French Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the methods for utilising the second generation sources are far from complete.
“That will take 10 to 20 years,” she told AFP.
The 27 EU nations are due on May 7 to approve strict criteria for the production of biofuels, according to the European Commission.
Speaking in Luxembourg on Monday French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier, meeting with his EU counterparts, said that food production must be the priority.
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And now brazil has more oil thats been discovered. Libtards have a dilemma: “save” the planet or starve the people?
Hmmmm, my bet is they will go with “saving” the planet because starvation will go a long way to curb the over-population “crisis”.
Too bad the libs cant countenance the idea that Volcanoes account for the vast majority of emissions into the atmosphere, yet the earth continually heals itself. I guess they will acknowledge such a thing once they are able to convince people that volcanoes are produced by the greed of rightwingers.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:59 pm“That completely ruins African agriculture,” he added.”
of course, we produce chocolate, coffee, bananas, ananas, manguas… this is absurd
anyway these bio-fuels are also a big bluff, that serve only the burocrats that think they are useful persons who think for the rest of humanity, fuck them all !
April 15th, 2008 at 3:09 amThis is nothing more than a “GREEN industry”. This is the way government will rebuild our economy.
Needless to say, complete failure is imminent.
Instead of importing oil, which we don’t have to do if we open domestic fields, we will be importing food grown in places like China. One of the most polluted places on the planet.
Their is nothing like liberal leadership.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:32 amFranchie, my dear, I think you need to stop coming here, you’re starting to sound like one of us. You’re even using guns. Keep it up, and you’ll lose all your “cool, hipster” Franco-friends. You’re going to run out of people to bum Gitanes from.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:55 amalyssa, wasn’t you that reproached me an american caracteristique : arrogance
April 15th, 2008 at 5:07 amNever forget that the eugenics movement is in the Left’s DNA. There’s a reason they pushed abortion and birth control so heavily in the third world, and it wasn’t out of the kindness of their hearts. Just as the ethanol mania isn’t out of a desire to save ‘Gaia’, at least among the leaders of the movement.
The Left isn’t so much pro-Earth as they are anti-human (or the wrong kind of human, to be precise).
April 15th, 2008 at 6:10 am“There will be nothing left to eat,” he added. I call BS here. I heard that they (Libtards) have this new food source it is renewable and quite tasty. They call it soylent Green, but they also have it in Yellow (lemon), black (Chocolate) and White (Vanilla). I haven’t tried it but I am sure the Pope of Hope will unveil this new food source at his next private fundraiser in SF.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:03 amif this isn’t proof of how fucked up the left is, i don’t know WHAT is!!!
they freak out about a manufactured crisis (global warming), and then manufacture another crisis as a solution.
i swear, they aren’t happy unless there’s some tragedy or cause to fight for.
how about they become religious and put their zeal into bettering themselves?
April 15th, 2008 at 9:50 amAn ephemeral threat causing a general, manufactured panic that leads to an engineered famine. Where have I seen this before?
Oh yeah. Soviet Russia, the 1930’s. So now the world “leaders” are reading out of Stalin’s playbook? Just friggin’ wonderful.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:13 amYeah, I saw this in a movie once …
Some married guy fucks a strange woman a few times, then decides she’s too “high maintenence” emotionally to keep seeing. So, he stops calling and dropping by.
SHE gets all, “I’m not going to be IGNORED!” on his ass and shows up at his home to chat with his wife and silently rub his nose in [it] …
Then she cooks his kid’s rabbit while the family is away …
There’s a tub scene NOT to be missed …
Point of the movie … Jumping in with nothing but raw emotion never gets you anything but a whole lotta messy shit and dead bunnies.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:22 pm