ENVIRONMENT: Biofuels - Great Green Hope or Swindle

[UncleSepp]

A few days old, but a good read nonetheless.

ENVIRONMENT: Biofuels - Great Green Hope or Swindle
By Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Oct 20 (IPS) - A raft of new studies reveal European and American multibillion dollar support for biofuels is unsustainable, environmentally destructive and much more about subsidising agri-business corporations than combating global warming.

Not only do most forms of biofuel production do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, growing biofuel crops uses up precious water resources, increasing the size and extent of dead zones in the oceans, boosting use of toxic pesticides and deforestation in tropical countries, such studies say.

And biofuel, powered by billions of dollars in government subsidies, will drive food prices 20-40 percent higher between now and 2020, predicts the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

"Fuel made from food is a dumb idea to put it succinctly," says Ronald Steenblik, research director at the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) in Geneva, Switzerland.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39740

[bread_and_roses]

1. Swindle. Worse. Even evil. Money for agribusiness, higher food

prices, more pesticide use and destruction of the enviromnemt - more insanity for profit.