Cuba and Venezuela have launched an offensive against biofuels, warning that the US-backed rush toward ethanol will aggravate global hunger and poverty.
Cuban President Fidel Castro has written two newspaper articles in a week voicing alarm at the prospect of countries boosting sugar and corn crops to make ethanol, a fuel that can be used an additive or a substitute for petrol.
By diverting crops to feed cars rather than people, the price of food would rise and the world's poor would go hungry, Castro wrote in the Communist party's official newspaper, Granma.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Castro's ally, also attacked biofuels in a sharp U-turn that put the two leaders shoulder to shoulder against Brazil and the US, two ethanol champions.
Until recently, Cuba and Venezuela were enthusiastic about the fuel and with Brazil's help planned to jointly build sugar mills and ethanol plants, hitching the Caribbean to the "green" fuel bandwagon.
That changed after the US President George W. Bush touted his support for ethanol during a tour of Latin America last month that clinched an ethanol deal with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The men followed up last week with a meeting at Camp David in Maryland.
Washington, a foe of Chavez and Castro, has promoted home-grown corn-based ethanol as well as the sugar-based variety produced in Brazil and tropical countries as a way to reduce US dependency on oil. Biofuels are also perceived to be less environmentally damaging.
However, critics say the fuel, especially the corn-based variety, is far less green than it appears and that converting swaths of land to provide fuel for cars would push up prices of food crops and meat, since animals eat corn.
In the wake of Bush's tour, Castro echoed those arguments. A recent column said 3 billion people would die prematurely of hunger and thirst. Chavez also criticized the use of biofuels.
It was unclear if Venezuela's mooted sugar mills and ethanol plants would go ahead.
Brazil brushed aside the criticism and on Wednesday its state oil firm signed a biofuel deal with Ecuador's state oil firm. The issue may cloud a meeting between Lula and Chavez next week.
Cuba and Venezuela are joining an unlikely alliance including anti-poverty campaigners, environmentalists, economists and scientists.
The Economist, offended by Washington's ethanol subsidies, said it seldom found itself agreeing with Castro.
"But when he roused himself from his sickbed last week to write an article criticizing George Bush's unhealthy enthusiasm for ethanol, he had a point," it said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS