Today in Biofuels Opinion: “the federal government’s wholehearted embrace of biofuels may be based on false premises”

The Ottawa Citizen editorializes: “Using food to produce fuel is hardly a crime against humanity…But credible economists like Princeton’s Paul Krugman do fear that corn-based ethanol production is “a really bad policy.”…Biofuel production alone has not created the food crisis. Other factors, such as higher demand for grain to feed livestock in China, a multi-year drought in Australia and market speculation have all contributed. Still, the federal government’s wholehearted embrace of biofuels may be based on false premises. Ensuring that southern Ontario farmland remains committed to food production rather than biofuel production is not in itself going to help feed the world’s hungry, but it is a step in the right direction.

The Executive Intelligence Review wrote: “On Aug. 4, 1994, Al Gore cast the crucial vote which set the United States on the road to taking food out of the mouths of millions, by using food for fuel. His vote…to break a 50-50 tie…killed an anti-ethanol measure sponsored by two Democratic Senators, Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Bennett Johnston of Louisiana…The New York Times reported, “With a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Al Gore, the Senate today … voted 51-50 to table an amendment that would have denied financing to the [Environmental Protection Agency] to carry out a rule guaranteeing renewable fuels a 15% share of the lucrative fuel oxygenate market in 1995…Speaking Dec. 1, 1998 at the Third Annual Farm Journal Conference, Gore said, “I was also proud to stand up for the ethanol tax exemption when it was under attack in the Congress—at one point, supplying a tie-breaking vote in the Senate to save it.”

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