Our friends at Avaaz have a new campaign on biofuels (full text below the fold). Biofuels are already absorbing 20 per cent of the US corn crop, and that figure’s expected to rise to 32 per cent by 2016. As Avaaz’s email puts it,
Each day, 820 million people in the developing world do not have enough food to eat. Food prices around the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico to Morocco. And the World Food Program warned last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the world’s worst-off. How are the wealthiest countries responding? They’re burning food.
Go sign the petition to G20 leaders in advance of this weekend’s summit…
Full email text:
Dear Avaaz member,
Each day, 820 million people in the developing world do not have enough food to eat. Food prices around the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico to Morocco. And the World Food Program warned last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the world’s worst-off.
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 prevent, even as they push the price of corn, wheat, and other foods out of reach for millions of people.
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 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/7.php?cl=60187429
Sometimes the trade-off is stark: filling the tank of an SUV with ethanol requires enough corn to feed a person for a year. 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 coalitions, 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 emissions, 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/7.php?cl=60187429
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
