united+nations Archives - Smarter Fuel Future

Rising Consumer Price Index Confirms Inflation

This year, the price of ethanol soared above gasoline prices, and each year, more corn is diverted away from animal feed and our food supply and into our fuel. The UN stated in a report that the cost of corn, wheat, rice and soybeans could go up as much as 20 percent thanks to biofuels mandates.

Earth Day

The UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Environmental Working Group, the Associated Press, Congressmen from both sides and others have revealed corn ethanol produces more GHGs than gasoline, is immensely water-intensive, zaps the land of essential nutrients and demolishes animal habitats.

The IPCC stunned many when it reversed its stance on global biofuels policies finding that the use of biofuels has sweeping consequences for the environment, global food security and the health of developing nations.

The RFS has global consequences that can mean life or death for hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Ethanol mandates that divert food into fuel are “a crime against humanity,” as Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food has stated.

Governments must put people’s right to food before short term commercial interests, said Oxfam before the opening of the Committee on Food Security’s annual meeting. Oxfam is calling for Governments to ensure that biofuel policies do not force poor farmers off their land and fuel food price spikes.

When crops such as corn are used to produce biofuels food and animal feed availability is reduced, food prices rise dramatically and hunger intensifies worldwide, as already impoverished people struggle to secure sustenance.

Next time you fill your vehicle up at the gas pump, you may be contributing to increasing hunger problems in Guatemala.

Food shortages across Africa, the Middle East and South America are the worst since the 1980s and have produced hunger and political instability. So perhaps this emergency is the time to relax the U.S. ethanol mandate, which diverts four of every 10 domestic bushels of corn into gas tanks.

Because of the demand for grain to produce the gasoline additive ethanol - which was supposed to reduce air pollution - plus a nationwide drought, many of the state's cash-strapped farmers are selling their cows for slaughter because they can't afford to feed them.

Corn ethanol boosters held yet another pep rally today for a dirty, inefficient fuel that has eliminated jobs, increased the price of food and gas, damaged engines and increased pollution.

The worst U.S. drought in a half century and record feed prices are spurring farmers to shrink cattle herds to the smallest in two generations, driving beef prices higher.

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