Pressure is mounting on Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly to shelve government plans to make us buy more biofuel.
Just days after 14,000 people - spurred into action by a RSPB campaign - lobbied Ms Kelly to halt legislation increasing biofuel sales, her colleague, Professor John Beddington, has echoed our warnings.
Prof Beddington is the government’s new Chief Scientific Advisor and made the threats biofuel production poses the topic of his first major speech yesterday.
According to today’s Guardian, he described the logging of rainforest to produce biofuel as ‘profoundly stupid’. He said the adverse reaction to biofuels was entirely appropriate adding that ‘there are real problems with [biofuels’] sustainability’.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations are just two international bodies to have spoken out against biofuels, primarily because energy crops are replacing food crops, creating food shortages and high prices worldwide.
The Times reports that world rice stocks are at their lowest level for 30 years and are set to fall further. Wheat prices are up 115 per cent in 12 months and reserves are at their lowest for four decades.
The government has commissioned a review of the impacts of biofuels’ production and Ruth Kelly has promised the government will not ‘go beyond current UK target levels for biofuels until we are satisfied it can be done sustainably’.
There is ample proof that it cannot, with habitats across the world being sacrificed to grow energy crops. And the evidence is plentiful that biofuel manufacture can increase not cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The government must delay April’s legislation increasing biofuel sales until there are legal guarantees that its production is not harming wildlife and is helping tackle climate change.
Read the Times report here
And the Guardian story here
Details of the RSPB's campaign are here