Michael Grunwald of TIME magazine brings us the truth about biofuels in a convenient, if fairly horrifying, package.  After extensive travel in Brazil and a clear-eyed look at the markets for fuel and food grains, Grunwald makes it clear that we are in the midst of a global screwup that could finally prove Malthus right. 

Scientists and many leading environmentalists clearly got it wrong.  In calling for more biofuels production, they forgot the power of the market.  With biofuels replacing food grains, people still need to eat, so food grains will increase in price and they will be grown whereever new farmland can be found — hence deforestation.   "It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots," he writes.  "Biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts prices, which drives agricultural expansion, which eats forests." Urgent action is needed to stop this process in its tracks, particularly from the world’s richest nations.  This could be a distant dream since all three U.S. presidential candidates are already on the record supporting increased corn ethanol production.  But without urgent action, the Amazon might not simply be deforested — it might be desert within a few generations.  And we all might be a lot hungrier.

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