TalkClimateChange

We’ve consistently complained about, and argued against bio-fuels on TalkClimateChange. It’s fair to say that we really don’t like them.

However, whilst much of the blame for escalating world food prices that has been heaped upon bio-fuels is fully deserved, I’ve often felt that we’ve tended to overlook other important factors in our criticism. Notably, that food production is one of the most over subsidised and poorly governed industries in the West - factors which have contributed to much human misery long before we started putting food in the tank.

Additionally, I’m also guilty of criticising a ‘cow tax’ earlier this week (see: Most Stupid Idea Ever?) in ignorance of a few facts on the environmental impacts of massive increases in meat production.

With this in mind I was interested to read the following letters in this week’s Economist:

SIR – The economic distortion in food prices caused by subsidies for biofuel (“The silent tsunami”, April 19th) is dwarfed by the distortion caused by subsidies for livestock. In the West we continue to redistribute taxpayers’ money to farmers, but in the process have neglected to price in the massive negative environmental externalities of the livestock industry. As well as overgrazing, soil erosion, desertification and deforestation, manure products with gaseous emissions have also had an effect on the environment; a single cow produces hundreds of litres of methane a day.

Feeding the world’s poor is not an issue of insufficient global resources, but of inefficient resource allocation. We have diverted crops towards livestock, and now to cars, and away from hundreds of millions of hungry mouths.

Milan Shah, London

SIR – To blame policies that support biofuels for the overall high level of food prices is seriously misguided: how much rice, lettuce, or turnip is used for biofuel? Liberalisation in agriculture will increase the average price for food, but also its volatility. If you can’t “stomach” that, then you need to regulate.

Patrick Chatenay, Canterbury, Kent

SIR – Do my fellow well-off liberals appreciate that by insisting on inefficient and expensive “organic” products with lower crop yields we are driving up the price of food?

Eric Evans, Montclair, New Jersey

So should we start to forgive bio-fuels? Are they back in favour with TalkClimateChange?

No. Bio-fuels are bad not only due to their impact on food prices and agricultural sustainability. Bio-fuels are bad because they are an extremely narrow solution to an extremely wide problem.

There is no silver bullet that will allow us to keep the internal combustion engine alive and un-checked forever, allowing politicians to pretend that they are solving the climate crisis whilst pleasing farm lobbies at the same time. The real answers will require some smarter thinking..

Letters reproduced with thanks to The Economist.