Perhaps the forthcoming world grain shortage will bring home to all governments, the futility of the mad desire to increase population. Once famine on a world wide scale starts to bite, who knows what the possibilities will be, perhaps even a reduction in world population with a consequent reduction in anthropogenic global warming. We can only hope.

David

This article it seems to me makes the mistake of thinking production is about social ends. Not so that is for Church and the public platform.
If fuel price becomes such that biofuels are profitable, profitable that is to business and the share holders who provide capital then biofuels we will have.
Those who cannot afford well maybe governments will on being given evidence of destitution provide some relief but the number must not impinge on industries need for government hand outs.
Obviously we need more people as workers for industry and tax base for the support of the deserving older generations. Population if it is limited must be so by competition for presumably if a child cannot be supported it will die. Granted mothers will continue to try to produce a viable child and in the name of goodness organisations given to helping the poor may receive some government money if only perhaps to prevent social unrest even terrorism, though it is really only those others who engage in this despicable crime never us, we only complain.
The production of biofuels can produce some char the Carbon can be sequestered in the soil improving plant growth and reducing greenhouse, probably saleable also offsetting the cost of making fuel.

A new American study from three agricultural economists at Iowa State University with insider information on the latest biofuel technology says ethanol made from cellulose will likely NEVER be affordable In the USA, the Federal tax credits for ethanol made from cellulose would have to be raised from the current $.51 US to $1.55 US per gallon, which will be unacceptable to our Congress and the American public. Switchgrass, crop waste, and wood chip biofuel schemes are too expensive to ever work!

The newspaper article can be found here - http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/3/125745/7746
The full study can be found here - pdf 180kb at: http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/DBS/PDFFiles/08wp460.pdf

Coming soon after the Princeton study published in SCIENCE showing that all biofuels are far worse for the environment and global warming than gasoline leaves the biofuel zealots little cover to hide behind. SEE - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151861

Please visit my page on biofuels, "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!" at:
http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html This has a warehouse of information and links.

I also have a short essay comparing the Bush biofuel plant to Mao's failed "Great Leap Forward" 5 year plan which led to the starvation of millions of Chinese at: http://home.att.net/~meditation/bush-mao.html

You can find the latest biofuel disaster news at - http://home.att.net/~meditation/biofuel-news.html

The present wheat price spike has many causes. One of them is that
the price of wheat a couple of years ago and before, was so low that
it was hardly worth growing.

Farmers cannot be expected to produce at a loss, to subsidise hungry
mouths. Govts are free to subsidise those hungry mouths, if they
so wish.

What stage 2 biofuels like Switchgrass etc will do, we don't know
yet for sure. Clearly some really smart people with big dollars are
throwing money at the problem, which is great news.

At the end of the day however, at some point, as oil starts to
run out and rise in price, there will clearly be competition for
land to produce energy, be that for human energy or to power
vehicles.

If the author is really keen on helping the third world from hunger,
he should not expect farmers to subsidise them, but encourage that
women in the third world get real about family planning, with
our help.

The West can keep sending boatloads of free or near free food, but
if the result is ever more babies and even more mouths to feed,
the problem will only get even worse.

Fact is that the global population has gone from 1.5 billion to
6.5 billion in about a hundred years, on the back of very cheap
and abundant oil. That cheap and abudant oil is nearly gone,
so whichever way we look at it, the ever rising population is
creating every rising problems.

The only positive on the biofuels front is the investment going into Third gen biofuels such as specicfic algae grown in ponds that have the potential for 10,000 liters/acre vs 600 l/acre for palmoils. We can not ignore the issue of peak oil and the driver this will be for alternative liquid fuels for transport. Western cities would not function if liquid fuels are not available. The market will ensure a fuel source is provided-the scenario of world food shortages due to use of grains for ethanol prdt is very likely. Combined with drought and global warming scenarios grain prdt is likely to be precarious. The reality of 6.8 billion people on this planet and the potential sociopolitical disaster caused by food & fuel shortages is real and there are no easy answers. The most likely outcome would be fortress developed countries and mass starvation and refugees hammering at the gates.

According to a recent radio report, the amount of grain used to make one tank of ethanol would feed someone one in the third world for nearly a year. So by running my car on ethanol I could starve 50 people a year. Great.

I agree that population is one of the great un-addressed issues, but although it is often raised here in OLO and crops up reasonably frequently in the letters pages in the papers, there is never a response. No-one seems to have any sensible arguments against population control (or none that they put forward) yet no-one wants to discuss it. I have commented elsewhere that Australia is well placed to try developing a sustainable no-growth economy as our population is naturally declining, so we could easily keep it steady by controlling immigration. So many of our current woes can be partly attributed to recent high levels of immigration - the housing shortage, housing prices, water shortages in Sydney & Melbourne for example.

I am convinced that we have the ability to work out a better way to do things that the current capitalist model, which no longer serves us well.