Dying to drive

The UK's Telegraph has a short piece entitled, "Global warming rage lets global hunger grow."

We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

A demonstrator eats grass in front of a U.N. peacekeeping soldier during a protest against the high cost of living in Port-au-Prince.

"The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said. ...

Mr Diouf says world grain stocks have fallen to a quarter-century low of 5m tonnes, rations for eight to 12 weeks. America - the world's food superpower - will divert 18pc of its grain output for ethanol this year, chiefly to break dependency on oil imports. It has a 45pc biofuel target for corn by 2015.

Getting ethanol from crop plants is morally wrong, indeed actually murderous. Global petroleum reserves are at an all-time high, while global food reserves are at one of their lowest levels in the modern era, yet we're reducing the amount of food we grow in order to use less oil. And it's not even working. More here.