(The following article is from the April 16-30, 2008 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

It seems that every spring, another crop of enviro-fakers emerges, just in time for Earth Day. This trend has recently become almost year-round, as politicians vie for recognition as "greens." Last December, George W. Bush signed legislation mandating a six-fold increase in ethanol fuel to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, calling the requirement key to weaning the U.S. from imported oil.

     Of course, any politician who supports the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is implicated in the resulting environmental destruction. The carbon emissions footprint caused by sending 200,000-plus troops from the U.S. and other NATO countries to central Asia, and then to supply, maintain and extend this occupation indefinitely, is simply enormous. Millions of people took part in "Earth Hour" on March 29, a welcome contribution to the struggle against global warming. But this effort was dwarfed by the consequences of the imperialist drive to seize control of resources - oil in particular - for the profits of transnational corporations.

     So when the Bush administration or the Harper Tory minority government pay lip service to the environment, keep in mind that these warmongers do more to destroy the planet every single day than we could repair by turning off our lights for an entire year.

     The "biofuel miracle" is a more subtle form of environmental fakery. For years, the U.S. Republicans and Canada's Conservatives simply denied that human economic activity and carbon emissions had any environmental impact. Now, these political forces are gung-ho for biofuels.

     The website of Natural Resources Canada calls ethanol the "road to a greener future ... helping Canada to meet its climate change objectives." A mix of grain-produced ethanol and straight gasoline "can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3 to 4 percent," says the NRC.

     The Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a "non-profit" industry group, argues that biofuels are necessary to "break OPEC's grip." The CRFA dismisses fears that turning food into gasoline will worsen global hunger; their argument is that the biofuel industry pushes up domestic grain prices, effectively reducing exports of North American grain, thereby helping farmers in the global south by increasing grain prices in their countries. This argument raises questions: how are poor consumers in the Third World supposed to pay these higher prices? How can using agricultural land to grow fuel increase overall food supplies?

     In fact, a prominent United Nations activist against famine has demanded a five-year moratorium on biofuels. The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, calls it a "crime against humanity" to convert food crops to fuel, driving up food prices when over 850 million people are hungry, and while a child under 10 dies from hunger or disease related to malnutrition every five seconds.

     Ziegler's view is backed by many other independent experts, for a wide range of reasons.

     For example, the biofuels industry demands more water than we have to spare. Ethanol uses 4.3 gallons of water in the fermentation and cooling stages of production for every gallon produced. In Minnesota alone, 16 current ethanol facilities and five more under construction will raise production to over one billion gallons, consuming more than 4.3 billion gallons of water. That could suck regional sources of groundwater dry. The spectre of declining irrigation sources has led some officials in the Midwest to delay or deny approval of permits for ethanol plants.

     There are other downsides. Many of the biofuel "miracle plants" have the potential to wreak ecological devastation. The Invasive Species Council reports that two of the most "promising" such plants, jatropha and spartina, are on an international list of the 30 worst invasive plants, known for overtaking native vegetation and reducing habitats for native animals, ultimately causing a loss of biodiversity.

     A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that neither ethanol nor bio-diesel (which is soy-produced) can replace petroleum without having an impact on food supplies. But such criticism was shrugged off at the First Biofuels Congress of the Americas. Investors paid $500 to attend the event, held last May in Argentina; media outlets not allied to the biofuel industry were barred from entering.

     Juan Carlos Iturregui, president of the Foundation for InterAmerican Development, told investors that "Biofuels can propel development. They bring a very important factor which is the ability to compete and develop. This has already been proven, let's not get tied up with supposed theories and false debates. There can be food for everyone. There can be biofuels for everyone."

     Really? Argentina is the third-largest soybean producer in the world after the United States and Brazil. Topsoil erosion and pollution caused from pesticides and fertilizers are among the side effects of soybean plantations which are expanding at a rate of 10 percent annually.

     Soy production has already led to the violent evictions of small farmers and indigenous people to allow land clearances for mono-crop plantations in Argentina's northern provinces. Seven farmers were recently arrested for resisting eviction from their lands in the province of Santiago del Estero. The provincial government, which ordered the arrests, co-sponsored the First Biofuels Congress of the Americas, which paid Al Gore $170,000 for a presentation derived from his award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

     Local environmental groups and farmers held a parallel event to shed light on the dangers of biofuels, especially the effects on food production and prices. They also protested outside the hotel where the Biofuels Congress was held, chanting "Food sovereignty, Yes! Biofuels, No!"

     Protest leader Soledad Ogoliano said that multi-nationals like Monsanto and Repsol YPF, a Spanish-Argentine petroleum company, reap large profits while putting Argentina's food production at risk. "The immediate effect of this kind of production is the massive deforestation like we are seeing now in the forests in Chaco, the Amazon, and other areas that are large sources of biodiversity that are destroyed for mono-crops, only one agricultural crop, generally transgenetic like soy.... We are talking about production that is highly concentrated because it requires large amounts of capital and investments in technology. It is no longer agricultural food production in the hands of local communities, but simply large scale production of commodities."

     Exports of plant-based fuels are soaring from Argentina, where food inflation is over 15% annually and 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

     Growing numbers of small farmers in Brazil and Paraguay have also been pushed off lands cleared for soy production, and in Mexico, tortilla prices have soared partly due to the nation's increase in ethanol production.

     The promotion of biofuels also is raising questions in Africa. Some 300 experts from across the continent and other regions gathered last year in Burkina Faso to debate the pros and cons of biofuel generation.

     "No matter what we say, today biofuels represent a pragmatic solution" to energy problems and soaring oil prices, said Paul Ginies, director of the Ouagadougou-based International Institute for Water and Environment Engineering. Ginies argued that biofuels can help reduce expenditure on energy in rural areas by 30 to 40 percent, and that biofuel byproducts could serve as livestock feed or fertiliser for food crops.

     But Moussa Hassane, managing director of the National Institute of Agronomy Research in Niger, insisted that Africa should be wary.

     "Why the particular interest in biofuel production now in Africa? Africa has always been a leading raw material reserve tank for the West," he said. "Africa constitutes the ideal site for the production of biofuels. But of what benefit is that to the continent? Could that be done without posing a danger to food production?"

     Other speakers warned that the growing demand for biofuels coupled with rising prices of fossil fuel will have a negative impact on millions of poor Africans. Escalating food prices have sparked violent protests in some of the continent's most poverty-stricken countries.

     Further "Biofuels Congresses" are already planned for Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. It appears that farmers and popular movements face a tough struggle against transnationals which promote biofuel production to meet North American energy demands at the expense of food sovereignty and biodiversity.

     One reason behind the push for biofuels is government support. US taxpayer subsidies to the big corporate interests behind biofuels have been enormous, including over $10 billion to Archer-Daniels-Midland since 1980.

     But it remains unproven whether ethanol fuel actually results in a net energy gain or loss. Some studies suggest that the energy derived from corn-derived ethanol in the US is 1.34 times greater than the energy invested in the form of natural gas based fertilizers, farm equipment, transformation from raw materials, and transportation.

     However, other researchers have found that if all inputs are considered, the production of ethanol consumes more energy than it yields. It has also been estimated that if every bushel of U.S. corn, wheat, rice and soybean were used to produce ethanol, it would only cover about 4% of U.S. energy needs.

     The widespread use of ethanol from corn could actually result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it replaces, according to a February 2008 report in Science magazine. "Other studies missed a key factor that everyone agrees should have been included, the land use changes that actually are going to increase greenhouse gas emissions," said Tim Searchinger, a scholar at Princeton University and lead author of the study.

     After taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent, will increase it by 93 percent compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period. Using switchgrass (a cellulose-heavy prairie grass) to produce biofuels is often presented as a better alternative. But the study found that this option would also mean replacing croplands and other carbon-absorbing lands, and would result in 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions.

     "Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," warns the study. The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands," releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains as U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels.

     "We should be focusing on our use of biofuels from waste products" such as garbage, which would not result in changes in agricultural land use, Searchinger said in an interview. "And you have to be careful how much you require. Use the right biofuels, but don't require too much too fast. Right now we're making almost exclusively the wrong biofuels."

     The bottom line is that the global warming crisis cannot be solved relying on the tools of the global capitalist market. The "biofuel miracle" is enormously profitable for a few big landowners and a tiny minority of wealthy shareholders. But the net ecological and energy impact of this option is extremely negative for most of the world's population. Just as bad, it postpones real action to reduce wasteful energy consumption in the imperialist countries which are most responsible for humanity's economic footprint on the global environment.