US And EU Urged To Cut Biofuels And Feed The Starving World
World Bank President Robert Zoellick has called for reform of biofuel policies in rich countries, urging them to grow more food to feed the hungry.
He was speaking at the G8 summit in Japan, where soaring food and fuel prices are top of the agenda.
The G8 leaders have been holding talks with seven African leaders.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon - also at the summit - urged the group to tackle the “interconnected” challenges of climate change, food prices and development.
Speaking on the sidelines of the summit on Hokkaido island, Mr Zoellick said biofuels - transport fuels made from crops - had made a contribution to food price rises.
He laid particular blame on fuels made from corn and rapeseed produced in the United States and the EU.
“The US and Europe also need to take action to reduce mandates, subsidies and tariffs benefiting grain and oil seed biofuels that take food off the table for millions,” he said.
Mr Zoellick also urged the G8 to increase food aid and reduce trade barriers on farming products.
The three-day summit is being held at the resort town of Toyako.
As the meeting began, Mr Ban urged G8 leaders to help tackle the food crisis by delivering “the full range of immediate needs, including food assistance as well as seeds, fertiliser and other inputs for this year’s planning cycle”.
He also told reporters that governments should commit to long-term agricultural investment and lift export restrictions “in particular for humanitarian purposes”. His comments came on the same day that the UK announced it would slow its adoption of biofuels amid “increasing questions” about them.
“We need to proceed cautiously until we can be certain that their expanded growth and use maximises the benefits and minimises the risks to our world,” said government minister Ruth Kelly.
Aid pledges
Leaders from the G8 nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - are being joined by counterparts from some 15 other countries, including seven African states.
The impact on the global economy of price rises and other shocks such as the credit crunch have eclipsed other concerns, correspondents say.
The EU has already been spelling out plans to alleviate the food crisis.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters that the proposed 1bn euro ($1.6bn; £800m) fund to help poor farmers in developing countries would come from unused EU subsidies.
The G8 leaders are also facing tough questions on aid commitments to Africa.
Campaigners say they are falling short of pledges made at a G8 meeting three years ago to double aid to the continent by 2010.
“They’re gradually stepping away from the promises they’ve made,” Oxfam’s Max Lawson told AFP news agency.
As well as discussing development issues in Africa, the G8 leaders have been raising Robert Mugabe’s controversial re-election in Zimbabwe last month.
US President George W Bush said: “I am extremely disappointed in the elections which I labelled a sham election.”
Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, who is also head of the African Union, said the whole continent shared President Bush’s concerns but that there was disagreement over what to do about it.
President Kikwete called for a unity government, and said he was optimistic that “as friends at the end of the day we’ll come to an understanding”.
Protesters have been holding marches in Sapporo, the city closest to the venue, to demand action on global warming, poverty and rising food prices.
(BBC)
No shit!
FOOD is PEOPLE fuel … Not machine fuel …
DRILL!
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Dump the fucking tariffs on foreign Ethanol for a start! Then maybe we’ll have more grain for FOOD than for fuel.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pmFine…the cost of our grains/corn..etc., etc., per-bushel will track and mirror the costs of oil-per-barrel.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:17 pmJust think of all those sober children in India–we need to produce more whiskey.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pmethanol is a pipe dream. its such bullshit to make fuel out of corn. and im for feeding the poorer countries, and also ourselves too. food prices have risen like 30 or 40% and to top it off they are rising even more than that because of the price to ship it places.
drill now and stop avoiding reality
July 8th, 2008 at 12:29 pm@ EarlG
Word. can’t say it better myself. boo freaking hooo
July 8th, 2008 at 12:38 pmSure, that will be a $30 barrel of oil please.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:42 pmIf you dump the tariffs on ethanol, the third world will beat a path to your door to sell ethanol, and starve their fellow citizens, Ethanol, burning food, is a really bad idea, must have been dreamt up by a Democrat.
Ethanol needs to be dumped in the crapper.
Coal-to-liquids(CTL) technology, producing oil replacement products, is economical at $40 a barrel. Germany used it in WWII for all their fuel. You would think someone would have noticed by now, the USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal. Sasol is the biggest company in the business, been powering South Africa with CTL for 35 years. China has their first pilot plant running and expect a production plant to start up in a few weeks. Qatar has a gas to oil plant coming on line in a few weeks as well, natural gas is a waste product to Qatar.
China has also contracted for a PBMR, the very latest high temperature nuclear power plant. Meltdown proof and no bomb grade capability. Ideal for the third world.
And what is the USA doing, listening to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and of course the Moo-saih. How long before we get it? Little did we know when Nancy said she had a secret plan for lowering gas prices, she was just funning with the voters.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:53 pmMaybe they can eat those twisty mercury filled light bulbs instead.
…
Really, to use food stocks for energy is a crime against humanity. It exposes the ignorance and selfishness of the shallow thought that pervades the modern liberal. Getting off petroleum if fine, but not until we have viable alternatives.
Gore and friends need to be put on trial.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:57 pmEthanol is most definitely not the answer. According to what I’ve read, studies have shown that it is dirtier in emissions than Gasoline. I’d like to see those tree hugging liberals get their head around that. DRILL NOW!
July 8th, 2008 at 1:18 pmMolly, I’d actually increase the tariffs by a factor of 2 and start OGFEC - the Organization of Grain-Foodstuff Exporting Countries.
If we want to break the back of the oil-ticks, NAM/Group-77 — whose majority of the members mostly consider themselves to be, at least, opposed to the US(democracy) if not our out-right enemies — that’d be one way to pinch-together a few sphincter muscles, vertebrae and disc’s real friggin quick.
Of course we’d have to watch the UN turn-to-dust and blow-away. Such costs….
July 8th, 2008 at 1:32 pmHere’s a great idear if ever there was one: The G1
Already stated, great idear.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:06 pmDrill for oil and refine, grow food to eat. Prices will go down. Jobs will be created.
July 8th, 2008 at 3:27 pmI can’t wait to hear the Goracles response to stop producing home grown energy and feed the world. This twisted prick is like most liberals, that being they love death. He started this nonsense about global warming, the USA responds with ethanol, now people are starving. Who is to blame? See the Goracle!
July 8th, 2008 at 6:49 pmOK, but you do have to remember that in dealing with environmentalists
July 9th, 2008 at 3:12 amthey are lying to you, much like the taqiyya concept in i slam.
Their goal is not to find a clean solution for the world,
their real goal is to shrink the population, shrink industrial
activity, and if possible return the planet to a state where
man no longer dominates their sacred animal kingdom.
They can’t explain it or they would be laughed out of the house,
but that is their deep agenda.
So expect every solution to be stopped. That’s what they want.
A full stop on human activity.
Pretty much the definition of a Third World country is that it has a corrupt government, which is why it is Third World environment in the first place. To give $$$ to a corrupt government and expect that the common man is going to benefit is inaccurate and is the “window dressing” that world organizations (UN, WTO, World Bank,etc) use to justify the wealth and power that they are amassing.
The $$$ give-away is simply “welfare” on a world scale. You know the old saying, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” There is no substitute for programs with long term goals of self-reliance and self-determination and I never see these large world organizations consider this. An oversight? I don’t think so. I think it is much like our own race industry (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al)-there is much money to be made and power to be welded by keeping a choosen population as “victim”. In the world of NGOs who purpose it is to get a population out of victimhood and into self-reliance, this welfare give away is called “paternalism”.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:13 am“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”
Let me fix that for you to fit today’s politics…
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and you can steal it from him and give it to the man that doesn’t want to fish.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:56 am