Biofuels: the fake climate change solution
Each day, 820 million people in the developing world do not
have enough food to eat1. Food prices around the world
are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico2 to
Morocco3. And the World Food Program warned last week that
rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the
world's worst-off4.
How are the wealthiest
countries responding? They're burning food.
Specifically,
they're using more and more biofuels--alcohol made from plant
products, used in place of petrol to fuel cars. Biofuels are billed
as a way to slow down climate change. But in reality, because so much
land is being cleared to grow them, most biofuels today are
causing more global warming emissions than they prevent5,
even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of
reach for millions of people6.
Not all biofuels are
bad--but without tough global standards, the biofuels boom will
further undermine food security and worsen global warming. Click here
to use our simple tool to send a message to your head of state before
this weekend's global summit on climate change in Chiba, Japan, and
help build a global call for biofuels
regulation:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60216612
Sometimes
the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol
requires enough corn to feed a person for a year7. But
not all biofuels are bad; making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is
vastly more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and green
technology for making fuel from waste is improving rapidly.
The
problem is that the EU and the US have set targets for increasing the
use of biofuels without sorting the good from the bad. As a result,
rainforests are being cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for
European biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are running
dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country politicians can look "green"
without asking their citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness
giants are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation will
only get worse.
What's needed are strong global standards
that encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in bad ones.
Such standards are under development by a number of coalitions8,
but they will only become mandatory if there's a big enough public
outcry. It's time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty
countries with the biggest economies, responsible for more than 75%
of the world's carbon emissions9, will meet in Chiba,
Japan to begin the G8's climate change discussions. Before the
summit, let's raise a global cry for change on
biofuels:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60216612
A
call for change before this week's summit won't end the food crisis,
or stop global warming. But it's a critical first step. By
confronting false solutions and demanding real ones, we can show our
leaders that we want to do the right thing, not the easy thing.
As
Kate, an Avaaz member in Colorado, wrote about biofuels, "Turning
food into oil when people are already starving? My car isn't more
important than someone's hungry child."
It's time to
put the life of our fellow people, and our planet, above the politics
and profits that too often drive international decision-making. This
will be a long fight. But it's one that we join eagerly--because the
stakes are too high to do anything else.
With hope,
Ben,
Ricken, Iain, Galit, Paul, Graziela, Pascal, Esra'a, Milena -- the
Avaaz.org team
SOURCES:
[1] World Food
Programme. "Hunger Facts." Accessed 10 March 2008.
http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/facts/hunger_facts.asp
[2]
The Sunday Herald (Scotland). "2008: The year of global food
crisis." 9 March 2008.
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2104849.0.2008_the_year_of_global_food_crisis.php
[3]
The Australian: "Biofuels threaten 'billions of lives'" 28
February, 2008.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23336840-11949,00.html
[4]
AFP: "WFP chief warns EU about biofuels." 7 March 2008.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpCFf3spGcDQUuILK5JFV-6NL1Dg
[5]
New York Times: "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat." 8
February 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html
[6]
The Times: "Rush for biofuels threatens starvation on a global
scale." 7 March 2008.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3500954.ece
... also see BBC: "In graphics: World warned on food price
spiral." 10 March 2008.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm
[7]
The Economist: "The end of cheap food." 6 December 2007.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015
[8]
See http://www.globalbioenergy.org,
http://cgse.epfl.ch/page70341.html,
and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3489640.ece.
[9]
Government of Japan. "Percentage of global carbon dioxide
emissions (FY 2003) contributed by G20 nations."
http://www.env.go.jp/earth/g8/en/g20/index_popup.html
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