I Told You So
Top news story today is about a new report that asserts that the growing of bio-fuels is in no small way responsible, though not entirely, for the continuing upward spiral of food prices. This is increasing the number of people around the globe who can’t afford enough to eat and is pressuring those charities that supply food as they can’t afford to purchase as much as they need.
Now I don’t like to say “I told you so” but I think I might have.
This is news of note today because in Britain we now have rules introduced (via the damned European Superstate of course) that require a certain percentage of fuel sold at the pumps to be derived from these so-called bio-fuels.
The report goes on to suggest that bio-fuels may not be as “green” as we are lead to believe. It suggests that, at best, they are carbon-neutral. Now if I’m not mistaken that means that they are going to do pretty much bugger all for the so-called global warming problem and here we are wasting valuable farming land to grow them and paying out hard-earned money to subsidise them as well. You do realise that is a double-whammy don’t you? You pay out taxes to subsidise their growth and then you pay out more taxes to fill your tanks up with them. Now whose a silly-billy then?
Not me. 
And another new report suggests a strong link between exhaust fumes and about 15,000 deaths from pneumonia over an 8 year period. I might have mentioned something about this before as well.
Comments ( 5 )
Hey, interesting blog you got here…
On the subject at hand: biofuels are carbon neutral. This is because, to grow a corn plant, you take carbon dioxide out of the air. When you convert it to a fuel and burn it, that carbon is released in the form of more carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels contain carbon from the air, but from millions of years ago— when we burn them, we release carbon into the air, skewing the balance we had when that carbon was locked up under the ground.
No, bio-fuels will not FIX global warming. But being carbon neutral is vastly superior to what we are burning now, which CONTRIBUTES to global warming.
Hi Jesse. Thanks for dropping by.
Yes I agree that they are better than what we do now but as I mentioned, that report suggests that being carbon-neutral is the best that is achieved which further suggests that certain bio-fuels are not even carbon-neutral.
My main point about bio-fuels though is more to do with “priorities”. In a world where we can’t seem to feed everybody properly and basic, staple food prices for things such as rice, wheat and corn are going through the roof, why are we even considering wasting valuable farm-land on growing bio-fuels?
That’s a very good question.
The thing is, depending on the extent of global warming, we could start losing significant amounts of land to ocean levels rising— though the land probably isn’t being used for farming at the moment, it’s coastal.
Nobody quite knows exactly how bad global warming is, but I think it should be a priority. Of course, growing food also must be a priority, a higher one than stopping global warming. Ultimately, though, it boils down to this: there are too many people in the world. We don’t all fit.
The only logical solution to this, though I’m sure some maniacs would advocate genocide as a solution, is to reduce the birthrate. However, it will take many years for current generations to pass away and for the population to be reduced because they aren’t being replaced.
I don’t really claim to have a solution here or an answer of whether biofuels are acceptable at all in a world with starvation.
We definitely need to figure this stuff out or we (the human race) are sort of screwed long term.
As you both rightly state, Biofuels aren’t in any way shape or form an answer to anything, environmental or otherwise. They appear to be yet another tool to allow the people who have a stranglehold on our economies and oil supplies to get richer by both selling it and artificially inflating food prices in the process.
I always think this way: ‘cui bono’, or who benefits? Is it us? No. Is it corporations, politicians, oil tycoons and International Bankers? Yes.
So why is it ‘sold’ in the mainstream media as a solution? Probably because it benefits those that tell us it has a benefit!
I’m still waiting for hard evidence that says we are the sole cause of so-called Global Warming. Most of the environmental issues we are told to worry about today were dreamed up by The Club of Rome; they even brag about it in their book “The First Global Revolution”.
The temperature may well be rising, but is it because the planet is passing through a different part of the cosmos? Other evidence has said that even Pluto is experiencing warming and it is Solar Warming that occurs every few millennia, wiping out entire species with it.
What amazes me is that us — the end user — are potrayed as the bad guys and told to recycle, to reduce our carbon footprint, to pay taxes to counter environmental effects, to pay to remove our waste, yet corporations insist on over-producing and over-packaging products without penalty.
Peak Oil is a distant memory; corporations are highly reliant on fossil fuels; the media sells us their products, and destroy more of the planet than ever before to sell daily newspapers that tell us the planet is under threat! Please…
If any government were committed to reducing our fossil fuel intake they’d subsidise solar panels or insist that all new-built homes had them or something similar to pump back into the grid. But that makes rubbish business sense from their perspective and would undermine the oil producers. Ask yourself, thus, who has shares in oil revenue
And don’t get me started on the bastards who print the money…
I actually wouldn’t disagree with any of that Starstika. In fact I’ve probably touched on much of it myself.
On the global warming thing I have to say that I’m not with the mainstream on this one. Like yourself I have also heard evidence of Solar warming which is melting the ice-caps on other planets beside ours. I am also aware that the average global temperature hasn’t risen for the last 9 years. Having said that, 1998 was the highest ever average temperature so it could just be a glitch but it’s taking it’s time to work itself out.