Labour should have the courage to abandon biofuels at once  
  Published 17 April 2008
    
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  For once, the preoccupations of the rich world coincide with those of the poor world. The relentless rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, which in recent weeks has been the trigger for riots in a number of developing countries, has started to be felt by shoppers in the more affluent western world. To some of us it means only a bit of belt-tightening; to Britain's poorer families it means a careful reworking of priorities; for some, it may mean impaired health as they cut back on items such as milk, 5p more for a pint than this time last year. But for the very poorest people in the developing world, the price of staple foods may be quite simply a matter of life or death, particularly when the UN's World Food Programme is unable to cover the increased cost of food aid to the most needy countries from its existing budget.
  Such growing anxiety about global food stocks was the least propitious moment imaginable for the roll-out of phase one of the government's replacement fuels strategy. This, in short, requires that all petrol sold on the forecourt should contain a certain percentage of biofuels (increasing over time). But one of the main factors cited in the rising cost of basic foods is the diversion of crops to make ethanol for biofuels.
  According to the IMF, ethanol production in the United States accounts for at least half the increase in global demand for corn. In other words, from this month, British cars will be burning food that the poor around the world are increasingly unable to afford, a situation that one UN food specialist graphically describes as "a crime against humanity".
  As with the abolition of the 10p income tax band, it has taken implementation of a badly thought-through policy to lever out the very strong arguments against it. Once a useful green soundbite for Labour, biofuels replacement now turns out to be a scheme that enjoys the support of nobody, not even the Prime Minister's own team. The best his transport minister can say is that we should monitor it carefully, while his Chancellor has called for an urgent review of the policy and is reported to be anxious to convince fellow G7 members of its folly.
  Promoting biofuels was in part a sop to the car-makers who lobbied hard against proposed higher fuel economy standards. Yet it would not require great bravery on the part of the government to abandon the biofuels programme and press for those higher fuel economy standards instead (and put its weight behind convincing our European partners to do the same).
  Biofuels advocates argue that greener technologies which would not jeopardise food security are just around the corner. But as Mark Lynas points out on page 24, once any kind of biomatter can be used for fuel, how long would the world's forests remain? Already the Amazon rainforests are being razed to cultivate soya crops for fuel.
  There are no quick fixes. The imperative remains, as ever, to reduce car use and petrol dependency drastically. Biofuels cannot be the solution. A swift acknowledgement of the error of the fuel replacement strategy would give the British government the authority to argue this within Europe and on a wider international stage.
  The food crisis presents an even greater challenge and as riots continue to erupt in the developing world, the urgency is clear. As a priority, rich nations must address the scarcity through greatly increased aid. The spiralling cost of grain has left the aid agencies with inadequate funds to purchase sufficient amounts. They need an immediate injection of cash from rich countries to keep food supplies flowing at planned levels.
  But Iain Macwhirter points to a more intractable problem on page 25. The giant global financial institutions, which once speculated on dotcoms and property, are now speculating in the same reckless fashion on commodity prices, with dire consequences for the poor.
  The World Bank predicts that demand for food will double by 2030 and that there will be shortages. The financial wolves are howling at the door. The priority for the international community has to be to work towards securing food supplies. A good start would be to release for food the vast quantities of grain now being diverted into fuel tanks.
  
    Hogwarts heartbreak  
  As her editors lost the will to challenge the pen that fed them, J K Rowling's increasingly long-winded Harry Potter tales began, at times, to drag. But her appearance in a New York courtroom on 14 April was as entertaining as any Hogwarts tale - with none of the boring bits about house-elves.
  Rather than Harry v Voldemort, the legal battle pits the world's "first billion-dollar author" and Warner Brothers against a librarian, Steven Vander Ark, and RDR Books, a small Michigan publisher whose sales record for any book is 10,000 copies. Rowling and Warner Bros accuse RDR of infringing copyright by seeking to publish a print version of Vander Ark's "The Harry Potter Lexicon" website. 
  In life as on the Potter page, Rowling is providing melodrama. With glistening eyes, she told the judge that the Lexicon had wracked her with "heartbreak"; that her "creative work" had been "decimated". She poured scorn on her opponents' feeble grasp of Hogwarts trivia, and flaunted her knowledge of Roman legend and medieval scholasticism. Not to be outdone, RDR's celebrity lawyer, Anthony Falzone, claimed that Rowling was seeking to "make the Lexicon disappear in our real world". Victory hinges on such questions as, "How factual is a fictional fact?"
  With wizardry, mythical creatures and magical metaphor flying around the courtroom, there could surely be no more fitting epitaph for Pottermania.
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