[GJM] Biofuels: the fake climate change solution

Thu Mar 13 05:24:42 MDT 2008

Dear all,

  Biofuel are not climate change solution and it is important to protection ecologically sustiananble food security mechanisms rather than dedicating agricultural land for bio-fuels.It is important to trasnform consumption habits. Lots of communication is being done for reducing the emissions through avoiding fossil fuel based travel. It is better to accelerate the reduciton throhg promotion of culture of prayers five times a day as part of the interfait common.

  Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam

robert searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

--- "Ben Wikler - Avaaz.org" wrote:

---------------------------------
Avaaz.org - The
World in Action 

Dear friends,

EU and US demand for biofuels is pushing up world
food prices and increasing climate emissions. We
should feed people, not cars--so join the call for
global standards to clean up the biofuels
industry:Click here now

Each day, 820 million people in the developing world
do not have enough food to eat1. Food prices around
the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from
Mexico2 to Morocco3. And the World Food Program warned
last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering
emergency food supplies for the world's worst-off4.

How are the wealthiest countries responding? They're
burning food.

Specifically, they're using more and more
biofuels--alcohol made from plant products, used in
place of petrol to fuel cars. Biofuels are billed as a
way to slow down climate change. But in reality,
because so much land is being cleared to grow them,
most biofuels today are causing more global warming
emissions than they prevent5, even as they push the
price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for
millions of people6.

Not all biofuels are bad--but without tough global
standards, the biofuels boom will further undermine
food security and worsen global warming. Click here to
use our simple tool to send a message to your head of
state before this weekend's global summit on climate
change in Chiba, Japan, and help build a global call
for biofuels regulation:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60535439

Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of
an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a
person for a year7. But not all biofuels are bad;
making ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane is vastly
more efficient than US-grown corn, for example, and
green technology for making fuel from waste is
improving rapidly.

The problem is that the EU and the US have set targets
for increasing the use of biofuels without sorting the
good from the bad. As a result, rainforests are being
cleared in Indonesia to grow palm oil for European
biodiesel refineries, and global grain reserves are
running dangerously low. Meanwhile, rich-country
politicians can look "green" without asking their
citizens to conserve energy, and agribusiness giants
are cashing in. And if nothing changes, the situation
will only get worse.

What's needed are strong global standards that
encourage better biofuels and shut down the trade in
bad ones. Such standards are under development by a
number of coalitions8, but they will only become
mandatory if there's a big enough public outcry. It's
time to move: this Friday through Saturday, the twenty
countries with the biggest economies, responsible for
more than 75% of the world's carbon emissions9, will
meet in Chiba, Japan to begin the G8's climate change
discussions. Before the summit, let's raise a global
cry for change on biofuels:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/biofuel_standards_now/9.php?cl=60535439

A call for change before this week's summit won't end
the food crisis, or stop global warming. But it's a
critical first step. By confronting false solutions
and demanding real ones, we can show our leaders that
we want to do the right thing, not the easy thing.

As Kate, an Avaaz member in Colorado, wrote about
biofuels, "Turning food into oil when people are
already starving? My car isn't more important than
someone's hungry child."

It's time to put the life of our fellow people, and
our planet, above the politics and profits that too
often drive international decision-making. This will
be a long fight. But it's one that we join
eagerly--because the stakes are too high to do
anything else.

With hope,

Ben, Ricken, Iain, Galit, Paul, Graziela, Pascal,
Esra'a, Milena -- the Avaaz.org team

SOURCES:

[1] World Food Programme. "Hunger Facts." Accessed 10
March 2008.
http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/facts/hunger_facts.asp

[2] The Sunday Herald (Scotland). "2008: The year of
global food crisis." 9 March 2008.
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2104849.0.2008_the_year_of_global_food_crisis.php

[3] The Australian: "Biofuels threaten 'billions of
lives'" 28 February, 2008.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23336840-11949,00.html

[4] AFP: "WFP chief warns EU about biofuels." 7 March
2008.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpCFf3spGcDQUuILK5JFV-6NL1Dg

[5] New York Times: "Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse
Threat." 8 February 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html

[6] The Times: "Rush for biofuels threatens starvation
on a global scale." 7 March 2008.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3500954.ece
... also see BBC: "In graphics: World warned on food
price spiral." 10 March 2008.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm

[7] The Economist: "The end of cheap food." 6 December
2007.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015

[8] See http://www.globalbioenergy.org,
http://cgse.epfl.ch/page70341.html, and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3489640.ece.

[9] Government of Japan. "Percentage of global carbon
dioxide emissions (FY 2003) contributed by G20
nations."
http://www.env.go.jp/earth/g8/en/g20/index_popup.html

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