Published on Dissident Voice, by Yves Engler, April 16, 2011.
"Surging food prices fuel ethanol critics," noted a recent AFP headline. With the commodity food price index (a combined figure of various foodstuffs) up 40% over the past year the danger of feeding cars food has shot back onto the media/political radar.
By using land to feed cars, bio-fuels have unleashed a battle between automobile owners and the world's two billion poorest people. George Monbiot explains: "the market responds to money, not need. People who own cars by definition have more money than people at risk of starvation: their demand is 'effective', while the groans of the starving are not. In a contest between cars and people, the cars would win." They are already winning. Foreign investors have been buying large tracts of land in Africa to cultivate biofuels while the recent food price spike is one factor in the upheaval in northern Africa and the Middle East.
Ten days ago the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warned that the push by Western governments to increase biofuel production could cause 200,000 deaths in poorer countries. Recently, the New York Times explained, "each year, an ever larger portion of the world's crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels." 7-8 per cent of the world's cereal crop will be used for biofuels this year.
… Rather than ecology, the push for ethanol gas in the U.S. was largely driven by economic considerations. In the late 1970s, the New York Times noted that Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) "tried to solve a problem with seasonal overcapacity in its corn syrup plants by producing something else from abundant corn supplies: ethanol. That set off a two-decade-long lobbying and public relations effort by the elder Mr. Andreas [ADM president] to win broader acceptance for ethanol as a fuel." Among the world's largest agricultural conglomerates, ADM now does billions of dollars in annual ethanol business.
For their part, U.S. automakers support ethanol because it deflects attention away from improving fuel mileage (or focusing on non-car transport). In fact, under Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations, making vehicles that can run on ethanol permits carmakers to sell more fuel intensive cars. A vehicle that can run on petroleum gasoline or 85 percent ethanol (E85) receives "a much higher mileage rating than it really gets" even though most of these cars never fill up with E85.
Fortunately, there's a simple alternative to ethanol. It's called a bike. (full text).