Unintended Consequences: Part the Millionth

When you mix good intentions and unscientific environmentalism what do you get? Widespread misery, that's what:

The global drive to put biofuels in our petrol tanks is pushing food prices up. As farmers across the western world grow more crops for turning into bio-ethanol and bio-diesel and less for food, supply is being squeezed.

Though touted as a way of offsetting global warming, biofuels have only had one clear effect so far, which has been send grain prices rocketing. While the British consumer has yet to notice much beyond the rising price of a loaf, the least well-off in other countries are already suffering.

Now, who could have ever imagined that the sainted biofuels had their drawbacks too?

Alas, fear not. The problem of course is not idiotic energy policies and AGW scaremongering; according to the usual suspects, it's all the fault of those evil well-off people that don't want to go back to a pre-industrial world:

"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," according to the US-based Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

To paraphrase Tom Clancy: "You want to live in harmony with nature? Go harmonize!".