Mike Moore on biofuels
Mike Moore manages to evade lucidity again this morning with a Pro GE, pro WTO, pro big business solution to rising food prices. He also joins many others on the right by attacking biofuels:
Filling a Range Rover with subsidised ethanol takes as much “grain” as would feed an African family for a year. Rich countries’ fuel substitution programmes often consume more energy to produce than they save. It’s a populist Green response to global warming that does the opposite of what was intended.
Three brief points in rebuttal:
- The Greens are hardly well known for populism.
- Biofuels are not inherently evil. They are one of a range of solutions to climate change and peak oil. As the Greens have constantly said biofuels should not be grown or produced in a way that limits food production. But some biofuels can be sustainable. And, as always, the bigger part of the solution is reducing our need to consume so much fuel of any kind.
- The ’starving African vs. Range Rover’ metaphor only really holds up if you accept that the SUV is also consuming petrol, cash and other resources that could be better invested as aid and development in Africa; a point I’m happy to admit to but I haven’t heard Moore or many of his supporters arguing Range Rover drivers need to get out of their cars and start investing in African well-being instead. Biofuels vs food is a direct example of unfair competition for resources. But it is really just a subset of growing consumerism, as advocated by Mike Moore’s WTO vs basic living needs of local communities.
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April 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
How come the whole food price increase thing is getting blamed on bio-fuels and not the elephant in the room high oil prices??
I mean people do realize that we eat oil right.
I wouldn’t worry about Mike Moore and his looney friends at the WTO, the higher oil goes equals bye bye for globalization and the WTO and Mike Moore etc.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The Greens are ‘hardly known for their populism’ ? Surely the anti-GE campaign is a populism versus science.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
No, I think the anti-GE campaign was science vs corporate business.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The anti-GE campaign was most definately science vs corporate business, since the scientists wanted more time to test the impacts the GE foods could have on the environment.
I myself am not anti GE as long as before it is released their is neutral and ample research done which shows the GE food will not have an impact on the environment or on human beings.
April 28th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Turnip, I think you’ll find that oil gets mentioned a lot http://tinyurl.com/4jfgbf
April 28th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
While the misappropriation of core and grain and all producing seeds for the production of Bio Fuels and the high oil prices certainly add to the woes of the already poor, it is not the source of the food crisis. In fact, this could very well be the worst food crisis ever while there is plenty of food and oil to supply everybody for their minimum needs. In fact the oil industry expects the surplus this year. The food crisis is not the result of shortages in the Food Supply or the oil, what is causing the food crisis is the subprime crisis.
With the Financial System crashing because of their irresponsible speculation with junk bonds and bad Investments in the subprime market, and the irresponsible response from were New York Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke who was cutting rates it is no tomorrow in order to save his banking mates rather than stabilise the American currency. By introducing huge amounts of dollars into the world’s Financial System he causes the dollar to inflate so it’s not really that prices are rising that the dollar is worth so much less. Combined this with Investment Bankers putting their money in commodities in real assets rather than the subprime junk bonds and bob’s your uncle; a new bubble but now at a cost of the poorest. It is literally while the Federal reserve of New York, a privately owned corporate entity, tries to save its greedy own by inflating the money supply they condemn some 100 million people to death.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
# travellerev Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
> It is literally while the Federal reserve of New York, a privately owned corporate entity, tries to save its greedy own by inflating the money supply they condemn some 100 million people to death.
why would poor people in third world countries starve to death because of inflation in the US?
do they have savings denominated in US currency? I wouldn’t have thought so.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Well to some extent US inflation is exported, remember you can’t buy oil in NZD for example or any ccy except USD
I think Iran might be selling oil in EUR’s now, but we all remember what happened to the last country that tried to sell oil in anything other than USD.
April 28th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Iran will indeed sell for Euros… and I doubt that you’ll find a problem paying in Euros in Russia either, though they may not advertise the same as Iran does. Surely Venezuela will accept the Euro as well. Chavez is no friend to the US.
They also might (in Russia) accept Rubles. You’d have to do the exchange calculation and the monetary exchange mechanisms are one of the reasons not to get TOO excited over how the bbl of erl is priced. It may be priced in US $ but you can buy in any currency that the moneychangers support.
The effect in the rest of the world, of the US inflation, is indeed that the inflation is exported. Most nations rely on the “reserve currency” to be just that, and prices and currencies and savings and investments are all tied to that common weak link. When the Fed inflates Americans don’t pay the whole price. We pay some of it here. The Chinese and Japanese pay a heap of it.
Mind, that the Fed is working hard to persuade the world that it ISN’T inflating and in some ways that’s sort-of true. It is (to some extent) trying to only replace money that banks and bankers destroyed by malinvestment but not to the small investor or property owner or anyone else. It is however, unable to isolate well and there are other inflationary forces at work in the economy that have nothing to do with the fools at Bear Stearns.
I’d call them reptilian but it would be an insult to snakes everywhere.
Check out how great they are doing here:
http://www.shadowstats.com/
BJ
April 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Here’s an article from Gristmill food price rises (Very interesting).
What is the Green Party position on biofuels? Can’t you do a U turn.. It makes sense to review policy in the light of new evidence.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/25/74229/2816
April 29th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
as i understand it food prices are inflating more than general prices therefore inflation of the US money supply is not the cause.
easy to see how a country fixing their currency against the $US can experience imported inflation, but not NZ
April 29th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
jh Says:
April 28th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
> Here’s an article from Gristmill food price rises (Very interesting).
What is the Green Party position on biofuels?
the Green Party position is that biofuels should only be used as an alternative to petroleum if (1) they are not made from food, and
(2) they are not grown on land that would otherwise be suitable for growing food crops.
> Can’t you do a U turn.. It makes sense to review policy in the light of new evidence.
I’m not aware of any new evidence that would justify a U-turn from the current Green Party position.
April 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Currently Act supporters are generously blaming environmentalist for everything.
Food prices> climate alarmism> biofuels.
Oil prices> can’t drill here, can’t build refinery (supply strangled).
House prices> greenies imposing costs and restricting the supply of land.
April 29th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I wonder if Mike Moore has calculated the impact of animal agriculture in diverting grains for feeding poorer humans into animals being fattened for wealthy humans
April 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
kahikatea
How much of such biofuel is available in New Zealand? Worldwide? What is the price? At what point would teh price point become untenable?
Are there sufficient supplies to meet the 3.4% - or whatever the target is - quota?
April 29th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
BTW: Still waiting on the ROI data for the “Buy Kiwi Made” campaign. Not a lot of transparency going on….
April 29th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
# BluePeter Says:
April 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
> kahikatea
> How much of such biofuel is available in New Zealand? Worldwide? What is the price? At what point would teh price point become untenable?
> Are there sufficient supplies to meet the 3.4% - or whatever the target is - quota?
I don’t know how much there is, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s not enough to meet the quota. I expect Frog would know better than me.
April 30th, 2008 at 11:01 am
BP, Of course we could always reduce our total consumption of oil to ensure that the available biofuels meet the 3.4% quota
April 30th, 2008 at 11:48 am
And do you think that is likely?
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 am
There is an alternative to biofuels, and it seems to have really upset half of Congress.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004384686_congcar01.ht ml