TalkClimateChange

Between 1974 and 2005 food prices fell by almost 75%. Good news for the whole world, and a good barometer of human progress. Cheap food = well nourished, happy people.

And then came Global Warming.

Global warming threatens our world not by warmer temperatures (historically mankind has prospered in warmer times), but by poorly conceived schemes and popularist policy decisions which threaten to undermine our world economy and undo much of the progress that we have made as a species so far. The latest such folly is that of Biofuels.

Buofuels are good because they require no adaptations to our existing infrastructure. Just fill up your SUV will a tank of ethanol and you’ve saved the planet without hugging a single tree. It’s better than slimming pills. Governments across the world are subsidising and encouraging the use of biofuels to score instant green points without causing any pain on their electorate.

The problem is that filling up your SUV with biofuel requires enough maize to feed a human for a whole year. With the sudden demand on biofuel ingredients caused by a world full of armchair environmentalists topping up their gas guzzlers with the third-world’s food supply it is no small wonder that the Economist’s food price index is doing an impression of Al Gore’s hockey stick chart. In fact, in real terms the cost of basic crops has risen by 75% since 2005. The 30 million tons of maize going into ethanol production in 2007 amounts to half the fall in the world’s overall grain stocks.

In the West we may be able to buffer some of the price increases through subsidies, and there are many who may not even notice. But those in poor countries where food is the most expensive item in their house hold budgets will surely suffer. And it is these people that the environmentalists tell us will be hurt the most by climate change, with little consideration of the problems that they may be facing right now.

Many environmentalists will claim that they also don’t support the use of biofuels. This may be true, but biofuels just serve as one excellent example of what happens when we make rash environmental decisions to solve a problem which is not yet fully understood. And if we are going to achieve the kind of emissions reductions that those on the Green Team talk of, then we will need to implement many more similar schemes which may have far greater consequences.

Data from The Economist.