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Off on the wrong track: May the current ‘food for fuel’ strategy get no traction

Okay, okay, so I can be bit of a smart alec these days because I drive a Smart car. But believe me, three years ago when I first got the thing, I felt more like an eco-evangelist, touting its safety, its fun factor, its low emissions and fuel efficiency to anyone within ear-range, but not really convincing them.

In 2005, when I got Smart, the Stern report on climate change and the costs to the economy and the report released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Peace Prize by basically stating that human-caused climate change was irrefutable — at least according to 280 of the world’s top scientists, and hey, I’m not one to argue with them — had not been released.

So three years ago, those of us non-scientists who ascribed to the fact of climate change and were desperate for something to be done about it felt like hands on the deck of the Titanic before it tilted, trying to get everybody out of their cabins and to safety. Anything to keep the planet afloat, in tact, on course, solid-state, stable as a maple table — even biofuels.

I confess: Before the huge increase in fuel prices we are seeing today, before the food riots in the streets of Haiti and Bangladesh, I thought the idea of making fuel out of veggie material was a good thing. Reduction in carbon emissions? Yes. Five per cent biofuels in every Canadian gas pump? Bring it on. Those prairie farmers will be lovin’ it and lord knows I’ve got more than a few relatives back there.

Boy, was I a sucker. And not the only one.

Fast-forward to today, and, ironically, the two inextricably intertwined issues — food and fuel — culminated in high level international talks held separately but almost simultaneously over the past two weeks, namely the UN climate change talks in Bonn, Germany (where 2,400 negotiators are trying to hammer out an agreement to be signed by the end of next year to replace the Kyoto plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), and the UN food summit held in Rome (to which Canada, embarrassingly but tellingly, only managed to send its ambassador to Italy to represent us amidst the presidents and prime ministers of major world players).

The jury is still out on exactly how much negative impact biofuels are having on food supply. For instance, the president of Egypt, where food riots have also spilled to the streets, called for an end to biofuel production, Predictably, the president of Brazil, where biofuels are produced from sugar cane, not corn, which has so many critics up in arms, said it was an over-simplification to tie food shortages and rising food costs to biofuel production.

Even reps from the UN’s World Food Program aren’t sure where biofuels stand in the equation.

But with all the media attention on the two events, the arguments have been flowing like, well, the carbon emissions we can’t seem to stop. My take is that the overwhelming sentiment, outside of Canada, that is, seems to be that they are indeed a culprit, with critics citing them as a disaster in the making. To top it off, Canada’s legislation, which has just passed the House and is now before the Senate, mandating 5 per cent biofuel content in all gasoline by 2012, is also being called disastrous.

And so it is, despite the “green” running through my veins, that I’ve crossed to the dark side on biofuels: I now see them as a quick fix that sounded good but can’t deliver. Here’s why.

According to the International Monetary Fund, which really has no stake in the game one way or the other, pressure from using grain crops for biofuels is adding 20-30 per cent to food costs.

Granted, some of the blame can be laid at the feet of unusual weather conditions, such as drought in Africa and flooding and excessive rain in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia (the type of extreme weather conditions, I hasten to point out, that the IPCC panelists tell us we are going to see more of with climate change), and sky-rocketing prices for petroleum-related products — which, don’t forget, include things like fertilizers and pesticides made from petro-chemicals as well as fuel for tractors to till fields and trucks to ship grain. But biofuels are part of the equation.

This month, Oxfam will be releasing a study that analyzes the impacts of biofuels on increasing global poverty and accelerating environmental degradation and climate change. Brazil, Indonesia, Tanzania and Mexico will be the focus, as well as northern countries like Canada, where high-cost, high-priced biomass will ultimately face competition from low-cost, low-constraint biomass produced in the world’s poorest countries (sound like a redux of our forest industry?).

Oxfam cites “countless peer-reviewed scientific papers” in showing that biofuels produced under the conditions Canada has will accelerate climate change. One is by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen and colleagues, who investigated emissions of nitrous oxide — a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is released through the decomposition of nitrogen-based fertilizers commonly used in producing corn destined for ethanol and canola destined for biodiesel.

They found release rates for the gas were three to five times higher than had been assumed earlier, tilting the cost-benefit balance against biofuels produced from corn or canola. Never mind the emissions produced by farming and shipping all that corn or canola.

Even the argument that biofuels can be produced from “waste” plant fibre, such as sugar cane or wood waste from forests, isn’t holding up practically (it’s still in research and isn’t seen as viable) or philosophically. Scientists are already concerned about the impact of diverting huge streams of vegetable matter into biofuels that would usually break down and replenish soil.

Here in Canada, the biofuel argument gained political momentum back in the 1990s mainly in the form of bio-ethanol produced from corn. And, if the vote in the House of Commons is any indication, it ain’t stopping now.

As one former civil servant in Saskatchewan puts it, biofuels meant a nice, easy sound bite that politicians were doing something “green” (get the double-barreled metaphor of green, as in “eco-friendly”, as in “plants”?) and ribbon-cutting ceremonies (at hugely government-subsidized ethanol plants there, the biggest of which is owned by one of the world’s ten richest people, the very astute businessman, Li Ka-shing).

Britain and France — in fact the entire EU — are currently reconsidering their pro-biofuels policies. Too bad, in this case, that Canadians are so darn stubborn.

 

A GREEN AND DOABLE FACT:

New Zealand is one of the first countries in the world to set a goal of becoming carbon neutral.

 

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who wonders if our senators are wise enough to stop the biofuel mistake.