I agree with that statement.
Jean Ziegler was a Swiss socialist who claimed that Nestle backed the coup against Salvador Allende.
Not many people eat saltwater algae from the ocean. That's the ultimate biofuel solution. 70% of Earth's sun absorbing surface is saltwater.
I am not a greenie, but I hate sending money to islamofascists.
As someone who runs two vehicles on B100 biodiesel, I agree that the ethanol-from-corn process interferes with food supplies. I use biodiesel that largely comes from canola oil harvested in South America. Biodiesel can be made from many vegetable oils, including non-food sources such as rapeseed oil and plants that grow on otherwise unusable land.
Future sources of biofuels will include cornstalks and other non-food plants and plant parts.
FWIW
Biofuels are actually a well-crafted means of creating an artificial scarcity of BOTH fuel and foodstuffs. Biofuels would only make sense as a means of reclaiming what would otherwise be a waste product, that would have to be disposed of anyway.
Generation of kerogen from industrial organic waste material, such as slaughterhouse offal, waste from timbering and wood milling processes, discarded paper waste, and organic roadside trash of all kinds, can be done by Thermal Depolymerization, or or the waste can be converted directly to electric generation through a Plasma Waste Disposal system, developed by Startech.
Take trash and make something out of it, by either changing the organic waste into kerogen, similar to the crude oil pumped up from the earth, or burning the mixtures of organic and inorganic waste in a plasma, and using the resulting products (gaseous diatomic hydrogen and carbon monoxide, plus inorganic molten glass-like slag) to power an electrical generation plant, and provide a perfectly satisfactory aggregate for roadbuilding or concrete production. Both these methods have the advantage of being carbon-neutral, that is, no fossil carbon is mined or extracted from the earth to change the balance of CO2 in any significant way. All the CO2 that is formed comes from other CO2 that was only recently sequestered.
Biofuels manufactured from foodstuffs diverted from the normal farm to market commerce, only cause the overall costs of the food AND the fuel to rise. Economically and as a way to preserve resources, it is no solution at all.
Isn't it interesting that the United Nations has never ruled on a "right to energy"? After all, without heating oil, for example, people freeze to death. Without gas and diesel, fire trucks and ambulances don't get where they're needed. You can have all the food in the world, but unless you've got some way to truck it from the field to the market, it's going to rot.
So if we produce plant matter that can be used for either food or energy, and we produce far more than we need for food, while maintaining a crippling deficit in the production of energy, how is it morally or legally wrong for us to convert that surplus food into energy?
Or are we somehow obligated to produce free food for the rest of the world, while that world charges us exorbitant prices for our energy? If so, can someone point out the root of that obligation?
And we can’t just take acres out of government subsidized soil banks and grow more corn?
How about less people in the world. That takes care.
Coal bad.
Wood bad.
Nuclear bad.
Hydroelectric bad.
Bio-fuels bad.
Don't even think about laying on a rock in the sun like a lizard to get warm. Skin cancer.
Wow! even a broken clock is right twice a day
“The growth in the production of biofuels has been driven, in part, by the desire to find less environmentally-damaging alternatives to oil.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial on this Oct 17. In addition to using up good farm land and driving up food prices, corn production for the purpose of making ethanol is causing a water crisis in the mid west. The direct production of ethanol, plus the irrigation for the addtional corn required, necessitates 1700 gallons of water per gallon of ethanol. According to one study, the US would need to convert 43% of its farmland to corn production in order to add replace 10% of its gasoline and diesel fuel with ethanol. Talk about environmental damage.
Not only that, but using corn to produce ethanol will cause a net increase in green house gases compared to gasoline made from petroleum. This is largely due to the fact that the manufacture of fertilizers used for this purpose releases nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. This gas has a greenhouse effect that is 500 times as potent as carbon dioxide. But when it comes to dealing with a problem the government is absolutely masterful at taking a bad thing and making it worse. The “free trade” US government is imposing a 55 cents per gallon tarriff on Brazilian ethanol imports. Brazilian ethanol is made from cane sugar results in a net decrease in green house gases compared to petroleum gasoline.