Biofuels Aggravate Global Warming and Cause Hunger

See the Slate article The Ethanol Catastrophe by Bjørn Lomborg. (Hat Tip: Carpe Diem) Excerpt:

"The United States spends about $6 billion a year on federal support for ethanol production through tax credits, tariffs, and other programs. Thanks to this financial assistance, one-sixth of the world's corn supply is burned in American cars. That is enough corn to feed 350 million people for an entire year.

Biofuels were initially championed by environmental campaigners as a silver bullet against global warming. They started to change their minds as a stream of research showed that biofuels from most food crops did not significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and in many cases, caused forests to be destroyed to grow more food, creating more net carbon-dioxide emissions than fossil fuels.

Some green activists supported mandates for biofuel, hoping they would pave the way for next-generation ethanol, which would use non-food plants. That has not happened. Today, it is difficult to find a single environmentalist who still backs the policy. Even former U.S. Vice President and Nobel laureate Al Gore—who once boasted of casting the deciding vote for ethanol support—calls the policy 'a mistake.'"