Lay Biofuel Death Toll at Gore's Door
by Marcia Merry Baker
April 12, 2008 (LPAC)--Among all the ways that Al Gore has advocated and worked to kill people, his biofuels crap is the worst.
Just at the time when low world grain production and stocks, relative to needs, began hitting new danger levels in the mid-2000s, Gore stepped up to lead the "alternative fuels'' insanity of the large-scale diversion of corn, cane, and oil crops to biofuels. Gore was the neo-green public figure, working in alliance with the neocon, so-called right-wing side of the promotion machine for biofuels. Gore grandstanded during the 2004-06 period, as nations were coerced to pass laws ordering that a big percentage of ethanol and biodiesel must be included in gasoline and diesel fuel, by certain deadlines. What ensured, besides a financial mini-bubble, was a massive shift in area planted to biofuels crops--corn in North America, cane in Brazil, oil crops in Asia, wheat, and rapeseed in Europe, and crops in Africa too. The conditions for genocide by starvation were created.
The Gorey/leftie line for doing this involves the familiar, multiple lies: the Earth is overheating from carbon dioxide; biofuels will emit less CO2; energy from biomass exceeds the energy put in to produce it. The Big Lie is that the Earth is overpopulated anyway, and reducing numbers is good. For example, Gore's 1992 book, reissued in 2006, Earth in the Balance; Ecology and the Human Spirit, gives his standard argument: ''[The countries of Africa] are already putting great strains on their natural resources and threatening the integrity of their ecological systems, so it is truly frightening to imagine the impact of doubling or tripling their numbers....''
The right-wing version, promoted by networks including George Shultz, one of the longtime "economic hitmen'' of the Republican stripe, and James Woolsey, former CIA Director, is the lie that biofuels will provide energy independence and security.
-Death Toll from Biofuels Swindle-
At present rates, in 2008, at least 95 million metric tons of corn will be utilized worldwide for ethanol, which is 12% of the expected total world corn harvest this coming year. On top of that, 10 million tons of wheat and other grains are going into biofuels globally. This doesn't count the agriculture capacity going into cane ethanol in Brazil, or Asian and European oilseeds for biodiesel.
LaRouche spelled out the consequences in a March 7, 2007 webcast, "Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy.'' He said, "There's no possible way that this biofuels swindle could work. Because what the system requires--it consumes, actually, in raw caloric terms, the production of this fuel produces less fuel in terms of power, than it consumes. In other words, there's no net gain from so-called biofuels. It's also an idiotic thing to do, because what biofuels means is reducing food! It means going into corn production for fuels, at a loss: that is, you get less power out of the fuel than you put into making it! This would mean destruction of the landscape, destruction of the entire economy, mass starvation around the world. It would destroy whole areas of food producing. Idiocy!''
Starving people is not satisfying enough for the appetites of Al Gordo. He is also directly cashing in on the biofuels craze. His London-based financial Blood and Gore outfit is directly involved in making money off the U.S. ethanol binge, calling it "green smart'' investment. His company, Generation Investment Management, whose co-officer is David Blood, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is significantly invested in the Danish firm whose subsidiary supplies 40% of all the enzymes used in the U.S. ethanol distilling process. The firm is Novo Nordisk, whose sub-group, Novozymes, is the world's leading supplier of enzymes used in processing corn into ethanol.
Novo Nordisk is one of 14 huge corporations (with Hewlett Packard, Sony, etc.) steered by the World Wildlife Fund as "Climate Savers.''
