Biofoolishness: Starving the Poor in the Name of Fighting Climate Change

Wasting food: 400 pounds of corn equals 25 gallons of ethanol.
Is it really worth it?

Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries

Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels

By Josh Gerstein , Staff Reporter of the Sun

April 25, 2008

The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.

With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti , Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”

“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol’s prospects.

“It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol,” Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. “It’s not going to be a very good diet but that’s roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year.”

Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. “Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him,” the professor said. “There are lots of solutions, real solutions to climate change. We need to get to those.”

Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore’s public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article.

Environmental self-righteousness and global warming hysteria are starving the poorest of the poor in the world. How many will die in the name of climate change zealotry?

Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection is the former veep's greatest scam yet. It is a pretentious multi-million dollar effort to control our thinking and, ultimately, radically change the American way of life. Stop Gore or see your freedoms erode.

Gore Launches $300 Million Climate Campaign

NASHVILLE, Tenn.— The former vice president, Al Gore, launched a three-year, multimillion-dollar advocacy campaign today calling for America to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The Alliance for Climate Protection's campaign, dubbed "we," will combine advertising, online organizing, and partnerships with grass-roots groups to educate the public about global warming and urge solutions from elected officials.

"We're trying to get a movement happening to switch public opinion so that our leaders feel, 'Wow! We really need to make this a top priority issue,'" the alliance CEO, Cathy Zoi, said.

An advertising campaign will equate the climate-change movement with other grand historic endeavors, like stopping fascism in Europe during World War II, overcoming segregation in the Unite States, and putting the first man on the moon.

The struggles against fascism and segregation, as well as the Herculean effort to put the first man on the moon were not motivated by megalomania or a desire for thought and behavior control. On the contrary, freedom was the goal of those noble and selfless enterprises.