Untrue.  Atleast according to the UN.  Ethanol and other Biofuels are the number 1 cause of the global food crisis to the tune of 30%+ of the problem.

The UN went so far as to call the US and UN biofuel plans a criminal offense.

The 2nd biggest cause to the global food crisis is speculation on things such as seeds and raw matierals needed for farming since even when times are bad everyone needs to eat.

We desperatly need to cancel all biofuel programs for ATLEAST 5 years.  Or atleast the ones that use up land that could be used for growing corn and other fuels.

Keeping things as they are or god forbid increasing them is literally starving the worlds poor.

Oil being the problem is nothing but misinformation by the ethanol lobby.

I wouldn't go as far to say misinformation, any economist would agree that if you raise input costs that the price of a product is going to rise.

I think the ethanol conspiracies are getting a little extreme considering you guys are condemning one conspiracy with another.

It's not a conspiracy ... Its economics!

If you have a product that is at equilibrium then supply equals demand. If the quantity demanded of this product increases faster than the quantity supplied does then the price of the good increases. I don't remember the exact statistic, but I remember hearing the amount of grain required to fill a tank of a SUV with ethanol was the same amount of food required to feed a person for one year. Now, as you can imagine, you don't have to produce that much ethanol to push the quantity demanded of grain enough to drive the price of food up dramatically.

What conspiracy?  It's the UN.  What does the UN get out of stopping ethanol production.

The UN has demanded that the US and Europe put a stop to there biofuel programs for at least 5 years.

This is the UN.  You love the UN.

Furthermore corn ethanol like the US uses is more expensive and has no enviromental benefits.

We're throwing away over 30% of our corn supply so we can pay more for food and make the ethanol lobby rich.

Furthemore biofuels actually have plenty of negative enviromental effects all there own not connected to global warming.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=26478&Cr=food&Cr1=ziegler

The United States and the European Union have taken a "criminal path" by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.

Speaking at a press conference today in Geneva, Jean Ziegler said that fuel policies pursued by the US and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis. Mr. Ziegler said that last year the US used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 per cent of its petrol supplied by biofuels. The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

Mr. Ziegler also said that speculation on international markets was behind 30 per cent of the increase in food prices. He said that companies such as Cargill, which controls a quarter of all cereal production, have enormous power over the market. He added that hedge funds are also making huge profits from raw materials markets, and called for new financial regulations to prevent such speculation.

The Special Rapporteur warned of worsening food riots and a “horrifying” increase in deaths by starvation before reforms could take effect. Mr. Ziegler was speaking before a meeting today in Bern, Switzerland, between Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key UN agencies.

Meanwhile, speaking in Rome today, a nutritionist with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said that “global price rises mean that food is literally being taken out of the mouths of hungry children whose parents can no longer afford to feed them.”

Andrew Thorne-Lyman said that even temporarily depriving children of the nutrients they need to grow and thrive can leave permanent scars in terms of stunting their physical growth and intellectual potential. He said that families in the developing world are “finding their buying power has been slashed by food price rises, meaning that they can buy less food or food which isn’t as nutritious.”

Regardless, I'm not even advocating that we use ethanol, so I don't really know how I ended up on the defensive. I agree that ethanol is not worth it, for the same and different reasons.

There are even biofuels that are much better than ethanol out there that wouldn't cause this problem. Some biofuels can just use something like the sheaths of corn as fuel and other predominantly cellulose parts of a plant (green stalks, etc.). 1) Its more efficient, and 2) it doesn't require us to use food.

So don't think that people who are against global warming are automatically for using ethanol. You guys are too hastily lumping those two together.

For a perspective... our biofuels programs will kill more then the War in Iraq did.

Sure it's a "lets not feel so bad!" indirect form of starving people. However it's selfish, and when it comes to our corn ethanol not even helpful to us in anyway.

A better option would be to stop all domestic ethanol production and lift the tarriffs off of Sugercane ethanol and buy it from Brazil if your that gung-ho in ethanol. Their ethanol actually has benefits.

However we put huge tarriffs against it, because of the Ethanol lobby.

Once again, biofuels =/ ethanol. Biofuels is much broader than just ethanol. We shouldn't use ethanol, I agree.

The other types of biofuels you suggest aren't developed.  Afterall Obama's plan is "Triple Ethanol use while paying the ethanol lobby more to develop other biofuels."

In reality all that funding should be going to other alternative enrgies like Solar.

combustion based energy production shouldn't be continued it's too problematic.

Agree, I'm not at all against biofuels but as they are developed now they are causing more problems than they are solving.  Using waste to produce fuel is a great idea and I fully support it but the only current application of this is with homebrew stills using cooking oils and such.  When you get into using waste products and portions of plant byproducts you are then susceptable to crop yield rates which could cause wild swings in supply and pricing.  It is still a viable option to use in conjunction with fossil fuels.  I guess the problem is how many new variables you are adding to the picture.