Environmental Policy

How bad do your environmental policies have to be that an 80 year-old bed-ridden third world dictator will bitch you out over them?

Seriously, that's one hell of a bitchslap when you think of it. It seems that Fidel Castro has written an open letter condemning Bush's idea to mass-produce biofuels. And frankly, I think Fidel is right. The idea of getting ethanol for fuel from plant sources, such as corn, is good in theory. In practice this should allow you to recover the carbon dioxide that is produced through combustion in the form of new plant growth. In reality there are two problems; the fuel costs to produce agricultural ethanol (tractors, shipping, processing...) and the conversion of food to fuel. The latter is the point that Castro hits on, and has already been seen in rural areas of Mexico. If farmers can sell corn for ethanol for more than they can get as a food source problems start to happen. In the case of the Mexicans, the cost of tortillas, a staple food, has risen dramatically in the past few months roughly 400%!

So it's clear even to "cruel" dictators that the US policy of driving towards ethanol fuels is a foolish proposition and has clearly lacked in any kind of real longterm planning or thought beyond US borders.

Incidentally today the Union of Concerned Scientists announced second annual "Scientific Idol" contest; a contest to draw an editorial cartoon about political interference in science. The image in this blog is from one of the entries last year. Having no artistic talent I'm not likely to do anything for it, but if you have any skill for either satire or comics, give it a shot.