how about you, Fran?

Bombing somebody is evidently better than bombing nobody.

keep to the Fen Causeway

12 seconds for 100m is faster than I could ever do it in sport shoes.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Food and Fuel: Biofuels Could Benefit World's Undernourished | Worldwatch Institute

"Decades of declining agricultural prices have been reversed thanks to the growing use of biofuels," says Christopher Flavin, president of the Institute. "Farmers in some of the poorest nations have been decimated by U.S. and European subsidies to crops such as corn, cotton, and sugar. Today's higher prices may allow them to sell their crops at a decent price, but major agriculture reforms and infrastructure development will be needed to ensure that the increased benefits go to the world's 800 million undernourished people, most of whom live in rural areas."
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"It is critical to the stability of the climate that we prevent biofuels from expanding at the expense of rainforests and other valuable ecosystems that store carbon and provide other ecological services," says Suzanne Hunt, who directed the team of 15 researchers from four countries."Energy crops should instead be established on the millions of hectares of degraded land that can be found around the world."

"Current biofuels production methods place a heavy burden on land and water resources, due in part to the fossil fuel- and chemical-intensive corn that is used to produce over half the world's ethanol," says Hunt. "Farming practices need to be reexamined if agriculture is to provide energy as well as food for a rapidly growing global population that is hungry for both."

The book concludes that the long-term potential of biofuels is in the use of non-food feedstock, including agricultural and forestry wastes, as well as fast-growing, cellulose-rich energy crops such as perennial grasses and trees. Following the model of Brazil's sugar cane-based biofuels industry, cellulosic ethanol could dramatically reduce the carbon dioxide and nitrogen pollution that results from today's biofuel crops.

So, apparently, biofuels would be just great if only we didn't produce them as we do in fact produce them, and if second-generation methods were available (which they're not, yet -- and are not certain to become).

But this is the Bush White House where success is never having to admit you're wrong. So they kidded everybody for 9 months with this strategy. Next there'll be the "too soon to tell" strategy, that'll keep them going for another 6 - 8 months. Then it'll be the "we can't commit the next president to a strategy" strategy.

And George is home free, never having to admit he's wrong. Never having to pull the troops out on his presidency. Never being a cut and run president, never having his helicopter in Saigon moment. Back to Crawford and all his frat boy chums.

keep to the Fen Causeway

a sky to die for...

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower