A
British journalist says the United Nations will officially warn that growing
crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices.
Robert
Mendick of The Telegraph cites “a leaked draft of a UN report” that he says “condemns
the widespread use of biofuels made from crops as a replacement for petrol and
diesel.
“It
says that biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could
make them worse.
“The
draft report represents a dramatic about-turn for the UN’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” he says.
In
2007 the UN praised ethanol and biodiesel for reducing greenhouse gases that
increase global warming.
Now
Mendick says the executive summary for the UN report says “increasing bioenergy
crop cultivation poses risks to ecosystems and biodiversity.”
The U.S.
and Canadian governments force ethanol and biodiesel to be blended into fuels
for retail. Those measures are controversial because corn and soybean growers
favour them for boosting demand and prices and buyers, including livestock and
poultry producers, oppose them for the same price-increasing reason.
