Expert: Biofuels a “Crime Against Humanity”
Sun, Oct 28, 2007
Environmental Graffiti Will be Changing Dramatically Soon. Get a Sneak Preview By Signing Up Here.
Simmons blogs at Thoughts on Global Warming. If you feel like writing for us, drop us an email!
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said this week he considers biofuels a “crime against humanity” and that he fears biofuels would only bring more hunger.
As an example, he said, it takes 510 pounds of corn to produce 13 gallons of ethanol. That much corn could feed a child in Zambia or Mexico for a year, he said.
He also called for a 5-year moratorium on production of biofuels to halt what he calls a growing ‘catastrophe’ for the poor. He said 5 years would be enough time for technological advances so that agricultural waste could be used to create biofuels.
“The effect of transforming hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tons of maize, of wheat, of beans, of palm oil, into agricultural fuel is absolutely catastrophic for the hungry people,” he said. “So it’s a crime against humanity” to devote agricultural land to biofuel production, Ziegler said at a news conference. “What has to be stopped is … the growing catastrophe of the massacre (by) hunger in the world,” he said.
Mr. Ziegler has been known for his comments before, once saying that the United States is an “‘imperialist dictatorship’ that is guilty of ‘genocide’ and that the Gaza Strip is “an immense concentration camp”.
Via :: BBC
If you find this information useful and would like to get daily updates, feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed.
You Might Also Like Our Friends' Posts From the Intertubes
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else.”
2 Trackbacks For This Post
October 31st, 2007 at 4:03 pm
[...] that people who use corn for food will pay. This has to affect supplies for the poor. (Comment here, though note the last line of the post, regarding the [...]
November 24th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
[...] used for producing biofuels is either corn or sugarcane. This has been shown to be inefficient, and may actually do more harm than good. It has also created food shortages, as Environmental Graffiti has previously [...]