G8 leaders must tackle the biofuels threat

THE growth of biofuels must be put at the top of the G8 summit agenda in Japan next week.

Right now 100 million people around the world are threatened by the soaring cost of food.

Last month’s emergency food summit in Rome identified biofuels as a major factor in the global food shortage. That fuel should be deemed more important than food for the hungry seems obscene.

Governments have introduced subsidies to promote the growth of biofuels. Is it so far-fetched to hope that some day a similar measure might be introduced to help the starving?

At the moment at least, it appears that the needs of industry are paramount.

But biofuels in the past three years have caused an 83% increase in the rise of food prices. Now the EU is to demand that all member states meet a 10% biofuels target by 2010.

Millions of livelihoods are being destroyed so that energy companies can make fortunes. Have we really come to the stage where the lives of the poor are an acceptable price to pay for driving up profits?

One must hope not.

John O’Shea

PO Box 19

Dun Laoghaire

Co Dublin