Biofueling the food shortage

After writing about my concerns about Biofuels here back in February, the issue is now beginning to get some serious coverage (you may have seen the feature on BBC Newsnight on Monday).

Biofuels are causing catastrophic environmental damage: because they're one of the main reasons tropical rainforests are being cleared (in order for farmers to produce crops used to make biofuels) - thereby worsening climate change; and because hundreds of thousands of acres of arable farmland that was once used to produce staple crops like corn, rice and wheat have now also been turned over to the biofuels industry.

This in turn is causing food shortages around the world; in turn pushing up food prices and in turn again making it harder and harder for the very poorest to afford these staple crops. Far from being the environmental godsend, biofuels are actually worsening international environmental and humanitarian problems.

Let's be clear: biofuels are not clean and they are not that green. The energy needed to process this fuel negates its benefits from the outset. They are not economical - or they wouldn't receive the vast and unsustainable subsidies governments pass on to ethanol producers. And any environmental good they (questionably) bring through reduced reliance on carbon-based fuels is eradicated by the loss of rainforests (which greatly reduces the planet's capacity for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen) they have been directly responsible for.

However, it is a fair question to ask - as Jeremy Paxman did on Newsnight - what's the alternative? We do, after all, need to find a sustainable fuel source to drive our vehicles. I think the answer is twofold.

First, we need to use electric, gas and hydrogen powered vehicles far more: they're not sexy, they're not especially fast, but there's no reason that for business use and urban travel they cannot be used. The Prius (featured in the photo above) is not a particularly beautiful car - it's popularity has simply been sourced from its claim to be a "green" car.

And second, we need to stop paying lip-service to the need for better public transport and rail freight. We can get so much of our transit off the roads and onto rail - reducing congestion for those who have no choice but to drive, improving the cost-effectiveness of public transport services, giving people a clean, safe, reliable and efficient service.

Although there's a limit to how convenient public transport can be - because it will never be more convenient than our own private, comfy, car - there's also a reason why London is the only major capital city where public transport use is rising: and that's because our Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has spent the last eight years investing in public transport.

There's one further, deeply ironic consequence of those environmentalists still championing biofuels despite the damage they're doing. This is that they are pushing the need for genetically modified crops - which can be grown in less favourable environments, in larger numbers, yielding larger harvests - higher up the political agenda.