Spread Christmas Cheer, Go Nuclear

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For many in Australia, Christmas is a time when there is lots of good food and wine – rarely consumed in moderation.  With the table overflowing it is easy to forget that there are still many hungry people in the world.  

With the continued overall global decline in stockpiles of grain, the price of commodities like maize has increased to such an extent that in places like Mexico there has been public rioting. 

Tens of thousands took to the streets when the price of tortillas – flat maize patties and the country’s staple food – tripled.

The demand for grain is being driven up in part by Asia’s increasing appetite for proteins and the need to feed livestock and also the amount of US maize going to meet the demands of its heavily subsidized ethanol program.  

The program is about Americans reducing their dependence on oil, and is also designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

While the US favours ethanol as a ‘green fuel’, the focus in Europe has been on biodiesel. 

The increasing demand for biodiesel is being met by cutting down more rainforest in places like Indonesia to plant oil palms.    Some of the activists who recently argued at the United Nations conference in Bali for a halt to the destruction of tropical rainforests, to reduce greenhouse gas emission, probably also supported the move to bio-diesels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from four-wheel drives.   

Last week, anti-poverty campaigner, Bob Geldof, questioned the value of renewable energies such as wind and wave power, describing them as “Mickey Mouse” solutions to the climate crisis. 

Mr Geldof suggests we should all go nuclear instead. 

Nuclear power is the only proven greenhouse-neutral source of base-load energy and could be used to power electric cars.   

The environmental lobby is likely to continue to condemn nuclear power as dangerous, but not necessarily to support biofuels whether biodiesel or ethanol.  

Sooner or later there will be a realization that it’s not a good idea to convert rainforests into palm oil plantations nor grain into fuel unless you are sure to have a surplus. 

As 2007 ends and world leaders leave Bali still arguing how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is interesting to reflect that, according to the World Bank, the grain needed to fill up a four wheel drive with biofuels could feed a person for a year.  

Published in The Land

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