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Headlines : EnvironmentChina: Food price rises force a cut in biofuels
In China, grain security has for decades been at the top of the party’s political priority list, and a 43 percent increase in the price of China’s staple meat — pork — over last year to recent record highs as a result of rapidly rising feed prices is certain to have triggered concern at the highest level of the party.
Knowing that food prices are related to political stability, the Chinese government has sensibly chosen to cut back on corn-derived ethanol production. In the U.S., strong agricultural and energy lobbies are driving the government to subsidize the conversion of country-sized slabs of land to support an already discredited industry. A change of mind seems to be decades away.
[Posted By Szamko]Republished from The Times
China’s communist rulers announced a moratorium on the production of ethanol from corn and other food crops yesterday at the very time that Western leaders are rushing to embrace alternative food-based fuel technology.
Beijing’s move underlines concerns that ethanol production is driving up rapidly the costs of corn and grain. It appears to reflect a growing reality about food-based alternative fuel: it is far more expensive both economically and environmentally, than Western politicians are likely to admit.
Calls for biofuels are politically attractive for European and US politicians, amid rising petrol prices and concerns about global warming and an overreliance on Middle Eastern oil.
Communist officials in Beijing, however, who do not have the political concerns of democratically elected leaders in the West, have reacted to a rapid rise in food prices and an intense demand on farm land that threatens to make ethanol production unsustainable.
Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.
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This was the first topic that Commandante Fidel Castro began writing about when he was better enough after his recent operations. Szamko has provided that link to this very topic that he chose to address so fervently.
Agriculture and agricultural irrigation and the diversion of surface water for agricultural production are the primary anthropogenic impacts on the climate and major contributors to the documented warming.
Increased agricultural production in an effort to partially replace hydrocarbon fuels is both counterproductive to environmental quality generally and increases the anthropogenic warming of the climate.
It simply isn’t possible to grow sufficient food for both human sustenance and to power our automobiles and industries on food based biofuels.
There is not sufficient cropland with the current population and demand for fuel.
The Chinese are wise to abandon this strategy, as we Americans continue to watch our tax money provide the incentive for the growth of an inviable industry.
George Bush and the Empty Promise of Ethanol or E-85
Sometimes no Peace