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Biofuels: The first casualties of the green fad

Posted by TFN-Oil on May 9, 2008

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“Biofuels have turned out to be a lose-lose-lose proposition. Once touted by the Greens and the biofuel industry as being able to reduce the demand for oil and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels have accomplished neither goal and have no prospect of accomplishing either in the foreseeable future.” —Steven Milloy

Blogger’s Note: A year ago, an alternative energy stock newsletter editor smiled at me, full of pity I presume, as I expressed my doubts regarding the viability of biofuels. (I just think the concept of burning food still reeks of blasphemy to the son of parents who lived through the post-WWII hunger years and the Berlin Blockade.) But the tune is changing. This article I found on one of my favorite websites...

By Steven Milloy

Baltimore — (TFN): Food riots caused by rising food prices have erupted around the world. Five people died in riots in Haiti — perhaps the first of many casualties yet to come from the current fad of being “green.”

Food riots also broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Ethiopia. The military is being deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to protect fields and warehouses. Higher energy costs and policies promoting the use of biofuels like ethanol are being blamed.

“When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal. Turkey’s finance minister labeled the use of biofuels as “appalling,” according to paper.

Biofuels have turned out to be a lose-lose-lose proposition. Once touted by the Greens and the biofuel industry as being able to reduce the demand for oil and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels have accomplished neither goal and have no prospect of accomplishing either in the foreseeable future. The latest research shows, in fact, that biofuels actually increase greenhouse gas emissions on a total lifecycle basis.

Add in that taxpayer-subsidized diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to fuel production has contributed to higher food prices and reduced food supply, and biofuels turn out to be nothing less than a public policy disaster.

Read on, please!

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Posted by TFN-Oil · Filed Under Oil and Energy