Image: Happy ending: Chile will no longer have a Climate Constitution … for now
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Can Climate Change Cause the New Economic World Order?
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As Maine bureaucrats prepared to vote on a ‘sweeping EV mandate’ an act of God weather event struck, creating widespread outages
By Tom Harris – America Out Loud
In last week’s article, “Winning Leftists Over to Climate Realism,” I explained that facts alone are insufficient to counter the years of deep conditioning that many of our left-leaning friends have been subjected to. To affect them emotionally, a crucial step in de-programming climate alarmists, we also need to demonstrate how the support of the climate scare violates their concerns about “social justice” and environmental protection.
In part 1 of this series, I brought up two factors that do this:
- How a focus on mitigation (trying to stop climate change) has resulted in a lack of adequate adaptation support for vulnerable populations, and
- How the effort to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is resulting in energy choices that deprive poor countries of abundant, inexpensive electricity.
Today, I will present two other consequences of the climate scare that should concern so-called progressives.
Biofuel expansion causing a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe
The expanded use of biofuels to supposedly reduce CO2 emissions to ‘stop climate change’ has resulted in the amount of grain being turned into biofuel across the world rising from 6.5% in 2015 to about 10% in 2022. In 2021, an astonishing 155 billion liters of biofuels made from different crops were burned, and European nations converted wheat, which is equivalent to over 5 billion loaves of bread, into bioethanol. According to Gro Intelligence, the annual calory needs of 1.9 billion people could be satisfied by current biofuel policies and future commitments.
This is happening in a world where, according to the World Food Programme (2022), 44 million people in 38 countries are at risk of famine. Progressives should also take note of the fact that about 800 million people go hungry each and every day, and 3.6 billion live below the poverty line. This is largely because, in the three years before mid-2022, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index rose by 58% to an all-time high, and prices of wheat and maize rose over 10%.
The situation in the United States is especially troubling. In 1981, ethanol (alcohol) made up just 0.01% of U.S. gasoline consumption. By 2021, it had grown to over 10%. This is fueled largely by the now 36% (2021) of all U.S. corn production going into biofuels. A similar share of soybean oil went to biodiesel.
Rainforest Rescue, who are justifiably concerned about the burning of rainforests and peat forests in Southeast Asia to make room for palm oil plantations, make an important point:
“The grain needed to fill the tank of a luxury car with ethanol would feed one adult for a whole year. If the car were to be refueled every 2 weeks, the amount of grain required could feed 26 people for one year. The impact can be seen in the prices for corn tortillas – the staple food for poor people in Mexico – which more than doubled within months. Food riots ensued. Even in the EU, prices for edible vegetable fats have increased significantly.”
None of this is new, of course. In its January 29, 2015 press release, Friends of Science, an Alberta-based climate realist group, cited UN Special Rapporteur of the right to food, Jean Zeigler, who in 2007 called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production in an official UN communique. Zeigler was candid:
“It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces foodstuff that will be burned into biofuel.”
Wind and solar power are ruining lives and the environment
