Biofuels in the news - and it's not good news

From Bj�rn Lomborg writing at the UK Telegraph:

The great biofuels scandal
Last week, the EU missed an opportunity to end the most wasteful green programme of our time � one which costs billions of pounds annually and causes at least 30 million people to go hungry every year. By failing to agree a cap on the use of biofuels, the Council of Ministers has given tacit support for a technology that is bad for both taxpayer and environment. Legislation will now be delayed until 2015.

The biofuel story is a perfect example of good intentions leading to terrible outcomes. Moreover, it is a lesson on how powerful, pseudo-green vested interests can sustain a bad policy. Hopefully, it will also be a story of how reason can prevail in the divisive climate debate.

Greens initially championed biofuels as a weapon against global warming, claiming they would emit much less CO2 than fossil alternatives. As plants soak up CO2 while growing, the subsequent combustion simply releases the CO2 back into the air, resulting in zero net emissions.

But the dream has become a nightmare, as environmentalists turn against it. Even Al Gore claims biofuels are a �mistake�.

Much more at the site -- political agenda meets unintended consequences and nobody wants to go on the record as admitting that they were ever wrong on something. Much more at the site and the 70+ comments are worth reading as well.