Ever see that Canadian Renewable Fuel Association commercial with that guy walking around the city with a microphone and a laptop with a clip of Stephen Harper promising in the 2005 election to use more bio-fuels, asking folks if they knew that we could use food (like corn, soybeans, etc) for fuel? There’s nothing that makes me want to splash vinegar in my eyes to temporarily blind myself than having to watch that assine commercial.
Why in the world would we grow food only to use it to get around? With all the starving and malnourished people in this world, it is extremely unethical to take food from the poor just so we can drive our sports utility vehicles around. Filling a 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn – which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year. How does that make any sense to anyone? While I completely understand the need to develop alternative fuels in order to get ourselves off the gasoline pump, I just cannot back using valuable food sources in order to do so.
What this is ultimately creating is a competition between 800 million motorists who want to protect their mobility and 2 billion of the poorest people in the world who simply want to survive, as well as making supermarkets and service stations compete against each other for the same resources. Already the United Nations has reported that it cannot afford to feed the 90million people (in countries such as Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia) it has helped for each of the past five years on its budget, due to the use of bio-fuels like ethanol, which is raising the cost of food. While in Mexico the use of corn for ethanol has led to a rise in the price of corn (it rose to over 400%) and has led to mass street riots causing President Calderon to cap the price of corn at 78 cents per kilogram (although he made the scheme voluntary for businesses). Unfortunately the massive increase in the demand for grains as fuel is going to come at the expense of the fulfilment of human needs – with poor people being priced out of the food market.
And it’s not just poor countries that are feeling the increasing costs of groceries either, a study released this past May from Iowa State University shows increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006 – and a report from Statistic’s Canada shows that Canadians paid 3.8 per cent more for food in April 2007, compared to the same month last year.
And ethanol doesn’t just play havoc on our food supply either – it also hurts our water supply as well, as it takes about 4 – 5 gallons of fresh water to produce 1 gallon of Ethanol. In
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