Emissions: fuelling the questionOil is running out. We've about 40 years, tops, before there's so little left it'll cost more per litre than the blood of angels. For some parts of the world, like small nations with healthy oil reserves, tinpot tyrants and tiny armies, this will spell disaster. They'll be picked on and fought over by big military powers like they were goldfish thrown into a bucket of piranhas, writes Kilian Doyle.
Think we're safe? Think again. We, as one of the most car dependent nations on earth, are in serious trouble if we've nothing to run them on. So act now we must.
The Government is spearheading a drive, for want of a better word, towards biofuel production. They are aiming for biofuels to account for a tenth of all fuels used here by 2020. They mean well. But they are mad. In theory, biofuels are a good idea. In theory, we could grow millions of tonnes of sugar beet or oilseed rape, turn it into fuel and be free from the vagaries of the oil market. In theory.
In reality, we can't. We've as much chance of meeting demand as I have of being crowned King of Togo. Only 10 per cent of Ireland is arable. There simply isn't enough space. Unless we want to dig up all the existing crops, roads, housing estates, schools, hospitals, shopping malls and golf courses and go and live in rafts on rivers, that is. In fact, the OECD reckons it would take 70 per cent of Europe's farmland devoted to biofuel crops to provide just 10 per cent of road transport fuel.
But there is an alternative: being a wealthy nation, we can just pay some penniless peasants in Brazil or Papua New Guinea to dig up all their crops instead. Isn't that just great?
The UN warns that diverting agricultural land to producing biofuel crops may increase hunger in poorer nations. Fact is, biofuels are already having an effect on food prices. Food riots have been reported in Mexico as corn used for making tortillas has been diverted to producing ethanol for the US. Do you really want to be snatching food from the mouths of Mexican babies just so you can stick it in your tank and drive yourself to get another burger?
If you don't care about starving peasants, think of yourself - biofuels are more profitable than barley, and barley farmers are cashing in. The price of barley has shot up so high - up by 86 per cent in a year in some places - that some day there may be none left for beer. The horror.
And then there's the supreme irony of biofuels. They are - and we're going into theory again - supposedly carbon-neutral. So it should be win-win, right? Nope. By burning down huge swathes of oxygenating forests to clear land for growing biofuels, millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are sent skywards, and we lose the best carbon dioxide processors, thus hastening global warming.
Still unconvinced? I didn't want to have to bring this up, but here's the kiss of death - George W Bush thinks biofuels are a great idea. So enthused is he that he has called for 75 per cent of US oil imports to be replaced with biofuels by 2025.
Has George wigged out and gone green? Or do you think there may be a tiny element of profiteering involved somewhere? Or maybe it's because he can't risk invading another oil-rich nation after the Iraq debacle, and thinks South American peasants and their crops are easier targets? You tell me.