More Biofuel Worries

I've touched on this subject a few times before, but it still demands our undivided attention:

The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday.

Speaking at a regional forum on bioenergy, Regan Suzuki of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization acknowledged that biofuels are better for the environment than fossil fuels and boost energy security for many countries.

However, she said those benefits must be weighed against the pitfalls - many of which are just now emerging as countries convert millions of acres to palm oil, sugar cane and other crops used to make biofuels.

Read the whole thing. Now the next paragraph illustrates a key point that Ms. Suzuki makes that I cannot reinforce enough:

"Biofuels have become a flash point through which a wide range of social and environmental issues are currently being played out in the media," Suzuki told delegates at the forum, sponsored by the U.N. and the Thai government.

Biofuels have become a sexy way for all parties involved to talk approvingly about alternative fuels. Folks on the environmental left can take about ways to create (theoretically) cleaner burning fuels that by continuing to use fossil fuels. And politicians get an easy way to pander to the farm vote by encouraging ethanol subsidies.

But as we continue to note, this continued reliance and glamorization of biofuels as the wave of the future is showing that it will have many drawbacks, and a lot of them will be harmful to the environment and harmful to the working poor, especially in developing nations trying to get ahead of the curve.

Foremost among the concerns is increased competition for agricultural land, which Suzuki warned has already caused a rise in corn prices in the United States and Mexico and could lead to food shortages in developing countries.

As usual, it's time that leaders from the around the world consider the consequences of "going green" before jumping headfirst into an empty pool. Let us hope that this rush to biofuels has not done any more damage to our ecology to our global economy, particularly in developing nations in Asia. I hate to repeat myself, but let's not kill the environment to save the environment.