The Folly of Bio-Fuels, Global Warming Politics

"Global Warming" politics leads in the push for bio-fuels but contributes towards world hunger.

Bio-fuels are touted by environmentalists as a way to reduce dependence upon oil and gasoline.  These fuels can be anything from left over corn husks to plants grown specifically to be turned into bio-fuels.  Nobody who knows much about the subject seriously thinks that bio-fuels will ever occupy a very large percentage of energy however there is still a worldwide push to produce as much of the stuff as possible.  As usual, however, when people inject their politics into any area there are often unintended consequences:

[Paul Conway, senior vice-president at Cargill, warned:] that rising populations and wealth in developing countries and governments’ targets for biofuel production were likely to continue to put upward pressure on food prices for years to come. 

The country that is most touted as a haven for bio-fuel vehicles replacing petroleum ones is Brazil:

In the mid-1980s – before any other country even thought of the idea – Brazil succeeded in mass-producing biofuel for motor vehicles: alcohol, derived from its plentiful supplies of sugar-cane.

In 2004, the first full year that “flex-fuel” cars were on sale, they accounted for more than 17% of the Brazilian market.

Last year, they scored an even bigger success, overtaking petrol-driven models for the first time since the 1980s and taking 53.6% of the market for new cars.

Unfortunately, bio-fuels do not necessarily escape the “evils” of petroleum as it takes a lot of energy to harvest the crops, process and refine them, then distribute them to consumers at the pumps.  Another obvious point is that for every acre of land used to grow bio-fuels there is one acre less of land to use for food meant for people and animals:

Biofuels are presented in rich countries as a solution to two crises: the climate crisis and the oil crisis. But they may not be a solution to either, and instead are contributing to a third: the current food crisis.

Meanwhile the danger is that they allow rich-country governments to avoid difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce consumption of oil, while offering new avenues to continue expensive support to agriculture at the cost of taxpayers. In the meantime, the most serious costs of these policies – deepening poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, and accelerating climate change – are being ‘dumped’ on developing countries.

Getting back to the food “shortage” we learn that, in a perfect world, countries would grow the food that best suits their climate, selling the surplus on the world market to those who need the excess to feed their populations:

Paul Conway, senior vice-president at Cargill, said: “Promoting a free and open trading system whereby countries can produce what they are best able … and surpluses can be traded across international boundaries is the right way to go.

“Food security, which was not on the agenda of anyone but agriculture ministries only three years ago, is now very central to governments,” he said, noting that the interest was at its highest level since late 1970s or early 1980s.

In 2008/2009 we saw an alarming rise in the price of staples such as wheat and rice, leading to riots in poorer areas of the globe.

As the world economy continues to lag, the popularity of tariffs and other political tools to try and make countries alter their trading practices gains popularity.  The United States shows no signs of signing a trade agreement with South Korea regarding lowering barriers so South Korea just signed an agreement with the European Union.  Trying to use politics to control trade in our global economy is silly as there are plenty of countries out there who still believe that free trade is the best, fastest route to prosperity.  But what trade barriers do accomplish is to skew prices for a variety of goods, such as the basic food staples as farmers look to make profits by switching to crops that can be sold for use as bio-fuels, reducing stocks meant for people.

It's already happening... here in Madagascar.

What we will likely see over the next 6-18 months are headlines shouting about starvation in Africa or governments being overthrown as their populations seek enough food to sustain themselves.  We will hear entreaties by Liberals that the U.S. is a greedy country using too many of the world’s resources and all of this lack-of-food is caused by “global warming” so we should transfer our wealth to poorer nations to be “compasionate.”

In reality, however, “global warming” and other foolish notions have little to do with these issues… it is mainly corrupt governments with horrible import/export accounts, badly run economies, trade barriers, and the increased production of bio-fuels causing these issues.

Don’t think it can happen?  It already has when “South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics to secure a huge chunk of farmland in Madagascar, which contributed to the collapse of the African country’s government.”