Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Wages Of Green

We are paying dearly for the green agenda. We are paying for it with out of control energy prices that set new records seemingly daily. And we are paying for it as part of the insane biofuel agenda. As to the latter, according to the Guardian, an unreleased World Bank report cites biofuels as being the cause of a 75% increase in world food prices.
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This from the Guardian:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

. . . The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

. . . Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

. . . [P]roduction of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

. . . [T]he report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

. . . "It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

Read the article.

The rush to biofuels taking agricultural land out of food production has been one a huge boon for select special interests and an utter disaster for the world. Yet with all of the accumulating information and with the price of staples seeming to rise daily, nothing is being done to stop the madness.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes we are paying for it and I believe we're only just seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is so much scientific refutation out there and it's not swaying the AGW religionists one iota. It's scary. They keep ploughing on like automatons without reason with their biofuel schemes and kyoto nonsense. People are already dying because of food shortages. How much more is it going to take?

Dinah Lord said...

The GOP's acquiescence on this Green nonsense is a BIG disappointment to me. I guess I should take comfort in the fact the GOP aren't as nutty as the Dems. Yet. Their efforts to go green at the Denver Convention are beyond absurd.

I wonder what it's going to take as well, Miss Aurora. The riots have started in the streets, people are dying - as you have already noted and the Green lunatics just go blithely on with their idiotic agenda.