37 countries in food crisis, UK burns food as fuel

Government biofuel targets for the UK come into force today. From today, all petrol will be at least 2.5% biofuels. A year ago, this may have been cause for some co2 reducing celebration on the part of the government. With the current food crisis now gripping 37 countries, the fact that we are legally required to burn food in our cars isn’t something to crow about, and even the Department of Transport press release is somewhat defensive. Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick says “we want to introduce mandatory standards as soon as possible to guarantee that biofuels don’t cause deforestation or food shortages and we are leading international work to do this.”

I don’t really understand why those mandatory standards couldn’t have been done first, and the implementation of government targets saved until afterwards. A year wouldn’t have hurt. Unless someone was just out to score some quick brownie points (greenie points?) with the enviromental lobby, in which case it’s backfired quite seriously. So, biofuels come in quietly, and according to a recent Yougov poll, almost 9 out of 10 of us don’t know that we’ll be tanking up on biofuels from today.

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