By Roy Innis The U.S. civil rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s was one of the greatest social and political liberations in history. It gave African-Americans and other minorities new opportunities and new levels of success in virtually every walk of life. But today we face unprecedented new challenges to indispensable but often neglected […]
By Walter Starck The most critical problem we now confront is not global warming or how to tax emissions, but providing enough affordable fuel to avoid severe recession before alternative energy can become reality. The Lucky Country faces a choice between disaster and a unique opportunity. Oil supply Over the past two years climate all […]
Nigel Lawson, the Iron Lady’s chancellor, scourge of the miners and father of the adorable Nigella, has joined the ranks of the climate change sceptics. He believes David Cameron’s green agenda is overblown, biofuels are useless and carbon trading resembles ‘nothing so much as the sale of indulgences by the medieval church’ An inverview of […]
By Paul Chesser With food and gas prices skyrocketing, several state climate commissions are ignoring the backlash against the suddenly antiquated policy of plant-enhanced petrol, as they hope to stop the alleged future global warming catastrophe. Why? Because before they even get started, panelists and their hired management team (in most cases), the Center for […]
By Linda C. Runbeck A recent Pioneer Press column by Sen. Amy Klobuchar called for a federal energy policy with multiple strategies, or in her words, ‘silver buckshot,’ to bring gas prices under control and increase our energy reserves. A good approach, but she fails to include the simplest and most easily accomplished ways to […]
By Peter Robison, Alan Ohnsman and Alan Bjerga The U.S. Postal Service purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks and minivans from 1999 to 2005, making it the biggest American buyer of alternative-fuel vehicles. Gasoline consumption jumped by more than 1.5 million gallons as a result. The trucks, derived from Ford Motor Co.’s Explorer sport- utility […]
By David Mercer Not long ago, the fledgling ethanol industry was the darling of investors, farmers, the federal government and a lot of Americans who liked the idea of turning corn into fuel. But suddenly, it doesn’t have nearly as many friends. Rising worldwide food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll […]
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL ROME — In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild […]
In early 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to a steep rise in the number of empty bellies in the world. How wrong they were. Soaring rates of hunger didn’t take a generation. It took a year. The president of the World Bank recently […]
An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy […]
The Wall Street Journal has reported the results of two independent studies that suggest the widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global […]
Biofuels are generally an expensive and ineffective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other policies and are likely to cause increasing food prices and insecurity, concluded a UK government report yesterday. It also criticized the British and EU governments for pursuing targets for increased use of biofuels without putting in place ‘robust’ […]
