Gideon Polya, “Global Food Crisis. Genocidal US biofuel & CO2 threaten billions”, MWC News, submitted 29 March 2008.
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Global Food Crisis. Genocidal US Biofuel & CO2 threaten billions
The United States (US) is currently using about 9% of its wheat, 25% of its corn and about 15% of its grain in general to produce biofuel. The United Kingdom (UK) has committed to large increases in the use of biofuels over coming decades, has recently announced subsidies for biofuel and supports the European Commission (EU) target requiring 10 per cent of petrol station fuel to be plant-derived biofuel within 12 years. However the huge and intrinsically genocidal US diversion of 15% of its grain crop to biofuel production has had a huge impact already on soaring global food prices – the world is already facing a global food crisis with alarm being expressed by UN, FAO and other scientific experts.
Thus the UK Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor John Beddington CMG, FRS (Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College, London.) has described the devastating potential of food shortages as an "elephant in the room" problem commensurate with that from climate change and warns that biofuel diversion (e.g. for canola oil- or palm oil-derived biodiesel and grain- or sugar-derived ethanol) is threatening world food production and the lives of “billions” (see: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23336840-11949,00.html ) : "It's very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food. The supply of food really isn't keeping up."
Recently Finance Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that it is "outrageous" that developed countries are turning food crops into biofuels while billions of people in the developing countries are living on the edge and trying to cope with escalating food prices (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7315308.stm ).
Numerous Mainstream media reports are describing how we now have a global food crisis with the spectre of widespread famine due to escalating grain and food prices – in a harsh, globalized market place those that cannot afford to buy food will simply starve unless rescued. Yet the UN and FAO are finding it acutely difficult to rescue such people.
These food price rises in turn are because of the huge US and indeed Western biofuel diversion, complicated by climate change (impacting on drought in Australia and Canada), weather (e.g. too much rain the US), hedging speculation and diversion for livestock production.
For an ALARMING graph of world food and wheat prices in recent years see the following report by Australian economists showing that the price of wheat in US dollars has DOUBLED in the last year: http://www.efic.gov.au/newsletter/newsletter_display.php?secID=15&id=79 .
The world may be seeing the commencement of a re-run - on a possibly 100-fold greater scale - of the man-made World War 2 Bengali Holocaust in which 6-7 million people perished in Bengal and in the adjoining provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa under the merciless British “scorched earth policy” when the price of rice doubled and finally doubled again (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ). Ten years ago I published a book entitled “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” in which I described horrendous man-made, market-forces famines in British-ruled India from the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million deaths or one third of the Bengali population) to the World War 2 Bengal Famine (6-7 million deaths in the Bengal region).
These catastrophes have been deliberately erased from British history and from general public perception – leading to the acute danger of History ignored yielding History repeated. My pleas for action to prevent further such catastrophes have fallen on deaf ears. Bengal is now acutely threatened not only from global food price rises but also from inundation from global-warming-driven sea level rises.
A quarter of a century ago the US National Security Council under Henry Kissinger prepared a 200-page study “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. National security and Overseas Interests” (NSSM200: http://www.lifesitenews.com/waronfamily/nssm200/nssm200.pdf ). NSSM200 expressed concern over bourgeoning populations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and how America could assist in population control through sensibly-directed aid for agriculture, female education and fertility control.
Back in 1974 the NSSM200 estimated that 10 -20 million people died avoidably each year from deprivation. After exhaustive analysis of excess deaths (avoidable death) for every country in the world since 1950 I estimated (2003 figures) about 16 million avoidable deaths annually of which about 9.5 million were under-5 year old infants (see the Tables at the end of Risk Management, Science and Denial: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogspot.com/ ). Now in 2008, genocidal US biofuel policies and world-leading greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution make the US the genocidal villain in a mounting catastrophe.
This carnage is being increasingly climate change-impacted. Indeed Britain’s top climate change expert Professor James Lovelock FRS estimates that over 6 billion people will die avoidably this century due to unaddressed climate change and catastrophic losses in agricultural production. Now the Chief Scientific Adviser of the British Government, Professor Beddington, warns that this scenario is upon us already and billions are at risk from price rises due to biofuel diversion.
The intellectual obscenity is the FALSITY of the proposition that biofuels represent a “green” solution to fossil fuel burning and the “peak oil” phenomenon (we are running out of oil and the price of crude oil has now exceeded UA$100 per barrel). However the “green-ness” of biofuel is incorrect. Recent US research by Fargione and co-workers and published in the prestigious scientific journal Science (see: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1152747) has shown that diversion of land to growing biofuel crops can produce an enormous “CO2 debt” from use of machinery, fertilizers, release of carbon from the soil and loss of CO2 sequestration by trees and other plants, QUOTE:
“Increasing energy use, climate change, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a "biofuel carbon debt" by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages.” END QUOTE.
The biofuel-driven escalation of world grain and food prices is the biggest story in the world today - overshadowing the horrendous carnage of the Bush Wars (post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 1.7-2.2 million and 3.3-6.6 million, respectively), which is largely ignored by Mainstream media anyway, or the 1.3 billion post-1950 excess deaths in the world that are COMPLETELY ignored by racist, lying, holocaust-ignoring Mainstream media in the Western Murdochracies (see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
The biofuel-exacerbated food price rises are compounded by erosion of agricultural productivity in the Developing World through climate change. Yet the same Developed countries that are behind the push to biofuels are the same Developed countries with the highest annual per capita CO2 pollution, with Australia and the US being major climate criminal culprits. Australia, which only signed up to Kyoto a few months ago, is the World’s #1 per capita fossil fuel-derived CO2 polluter by far, the world’s #1 coal exporter and the world’s #1 exporter of sugar (a major carbon source of for ethanol production). The US is (now with China) the world’s top greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter but has over 4 times the Chinese population; it refuses to sign Kyoto; and it uses about 15% of its grain for biofuel in a world in which two thirds of population is malnourished.
As we stare into the Abyss, what can decent folk do? Decent folk must INFORM everyone they can about the mounting disaster and OPPOSE all those complicit in climate criminal, genocidal US and Australian biofuel perversion and profligate greenhouse gas pollution. We have come to a pass in which urgent, punitive Sanctions, Boycotts, Green Tariffs and Reparations will be required to stop the mounting global food crisis and the food price-driven Third World Genocide.