That seems to be the message from two stories published today, one on each side of the Atlantic.
In a news analysis, the New York Times notes that:
a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.
Officials from both the UN and the World Bank have recently voiced concerns about the impact of biofuels on the price of food.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Independent reports that, “the production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment” and asks why the UK government wants its citizens to use more of it.
The Independent’s Cahal Milmo also mentions the impact that biofuel production is having on world food prices. But of equal concern is the environmental damage that careless encouragement of biofuels can cause. British campaigners, reports Milmo, this week
condemned as “disastrous” the absence of any standards requiring producers to prove their biofuel is not the product of highly damaging agricultural practices responsible for destroying rainforests, peatlands and wildlife-rich savannahs or grasslands from Indonesia to sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.
EarthQuaker 