Biofuels Are Indefensible

Scathing editorial by the chairman of Nestle in the Wall Street Journal on the push for biofuels (including massive subsidies and mandates from government)

If there’s one certainty, it is this: The production of biofuels has stimulated a massive, and destructive, reorientation of the world’s agriculture markets. The U.S. Department of Energy calculates that every 10,000 liters of water produces as little as five liters of ethanol, or one to two liters of biodiesel. Biofuels are economical nonsense, ecologically useless and ethically
indefensible. This year, the U.S. will use around 130 million tons of corn for biofuels. This corn was not available as human food, nor as fodder to animals. Is this the right strategy, for a product that won’t satisfy even a small percentage of our energy needs?