The rush for biofuels could harm the world's poorest people, Oxfam has said. In a new report, the UK aid charity appears to be joining a growing chorus of concern about the side-effects of Europe's drive to get fuel from plants. More news from our friends across the pond… This article is great because it brings to light an “unforeseen” downside of tapping into biofuels – the impoverished stand to suffer greatly from natural resources unnaturally and rapidly increasing in value. To go to the article directly: Robert Bailey, a policy advisor at Oxfam, said: "In the scramble to supply the EU and the rest of the world with biofuels, poor people are getting trampled.
Another point this article makes at the end, and just as vital, is biofuels are really not the end-all solution to global warming. Despite what the Bush Administration has started advocating for this year, biofuels are barely an improvement over oil. While that could change in the future, I would ask first what the short-term costs of going down that path is and what damages are irreversible? To go back to the article: "Biofuels are not a panacea - even if the EU is able to reach the 10% target sustainably, and Oxfam doubts that it can, it will only shave a few per cent of emissions off a continually growing total," he said.
