CCAG should be vigilant on biofuels

Instead of addressing our dependence on cars with pedestrian friendly cities policy makers are rushing to subsidize ethanol. The result is that we are Starving the People To Feed the Cars.

MICHAEL GRUNWALD writes that "by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry.
Four years ago, two University of Minnesota researchers predicted the ranks of the hungry would drop to 625 million by 2025; last year, after adjusting for the inflationary effects of biofuels, they increased their prediction to 1.2 billion. The lesson behind the math is that on a warming planet, land is an incredibly precious commodity, and every acre used to generate fuel is an acre that can't be used to generate the food needed to feed us or the carbon storage needed to save us."

Lester Brown writes that the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.

Biofuels like corn, which we are subsidizing, threaten streams by reducing their environmental service. As streams weaken in their ability to remove nitrogen from fertilizer, more runoff gets to the sea, where algae grows and dies, creating huge oxygen deprived dead zones.

It would be a poor tradeoff if we killed the seas to fuel our cars.