Barack Obama - As the world's most vocal advocate of biofuels, Barack Obama has done more to shrink the human food supply and increase the cost of food than anyone in world history.  Barack Obama truly deserves the title of the reigning King of Starvation.  The higher you push up the cost of food, the more people around the world die of malnutrition and related illness; the equation is that simple.  Barack Obama's decadent indifference to the world food crisis that he has greatly accelerated for selfish political reasons is the biggest crime of the 21st century, with by far the highest body count.  Obama wanted the farm-ethanol-biodiesel vote to win the 2008 Iowa Caucus, and he did not care who he hurt in order to gain the prestige of power.  Former Vice President Al Gore has admitted that corn ethanol was a huge mistake, and that he had supported corn ethanol production in order to win the Iowa Caucus himself, but Barack Obama continues the BIG LIE.  Nothing has done more to increase deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas release than global biofuel production, so Barack Obama is the reigning king of environmental hypocrisy as well.

Jimmy Carter - President Jimmy Carter signed the first biofuel subsidy bill in 1979, and biofuel production was continued under Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton.  Biofuel production was then tragically expanded by cheerleading biofuel advocates George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Amory Lovins  - The origins of biofuel subsidies in the United States dates back to environmentalist guru Amory Lovins’s seminal pro-biofuel article, Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken, published in FOREIGN AFFAIRS magazine in 1976, which Lovins later expanded into his book, Soft Energy Paths.  When President Carter welcomed Lovins into the Oval Office in 1978 for a visit, Lovins’s book was reportedly resting on the president’s desk.

Mao Tse-tung - One of the most tragic mistakes in world history was Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s well meaning Great Leap Forward five year plan, which is estimated to have killed between 14 and 40 million Chinese through starvation and related illness.  Mao banned private farms in 1958 in his shift to communes and greater industrial output at the expense of agriculture.  This led to a 15% drop in grain production in China in 1959, and another 10% reduction in 1960.  That may not sound like much of a drop in agricultural output, but it was enough to kill millions.  Of course, biofuel farming has caused far larger reductions in food production on a global scale.

George W. Bush - George W. Bush greatly expanded biofuel production on December 19, 2007, by signing the now infamous
Energy Independence and Security Act.  As Barack Obama, George Bush killed far more people through his reckless agricultural policies than through his unnecessary and counterproductive wars.

Pol Pot - Most Americans know of the late Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot, through the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields.  Pol Pot ordered the execution of anyone he thought would stand in the way of returning Cambodia to a utopian, natural state and away from modernization.  What most Americans do not understand is that the number of people Pol Pot intentionally killed through planned executions was only a tiny percentage of the several million Cambodians Pol Pot unintentionally starved to death through his idealistic but idiotically irresponsible agricultural policies.  Ask yourself this; are Barack Obama's idealistic but idiotically irresponsible agricultural and energy policies any better just because Obama is an American citizen and one of us?  Any rational estimate of the number of people that global biofuel production has killed since the year 1980 is certainly many times greater (at least 10 times greater) than the number of people killed by Pol Pot's desire to eschew modern farming methods. 

     Barack Obama's homicidal and suicidal desire to "use our farmland to produce both food and fuel" makes Barack Obama the Pol Pot of the 21st century as far as the sanity of his agricultural policies are concerned.  The world is running out of topsoil to grow food, water to irrigate crops, and phosphates to fertilize crops.  The very last thing we should be doing is doubling the production demands on our farmland, and intentionally raising the cost of fertilizer and everything needed to grow essential food.  Barack Obama has killed millions through politically motivated agricultural policy, not through executions.  There is no blood when you starve someone to death, but the death is as real as a bullet to the head.  Despite being begged by nonprofit hunger fighting organizations and United Nations food security officials to end biofuel production, Barack Obama continues his belligerent support for an idea that has been soundly rejected by every honest and knowledgeable scientist on planet earth.

Adolf Hitler - Hitler makes the hall of shame because all large scale wars cause major disruptions in agricultural production which inevitably leads to mass starvation.  The exact number of people who starved to death during World War II is unknown, but we do know the malnutrition death toll was in the millions.

Joseph Stalin - Stalin banned private farms in the former Soviet Union, which made farms dramatically less productive, and led to food shortages and the death of millions.

Steven Chu - After several of Barack Obama's own scientific advisers told him that biofuels are a disaster, Obama hired Mad Scientist biofuel advocate Steven Chu to be our new Secretary of Energy.  Obama hoped Chu could somehow save his politically concocted biofuel schemes that had already been condemned by many scientists and newspaper editorials as a food killing fiasco.  Chu's official Department of Energy line is that he supports all the new forms of energy production, which means he even supports the ones that are not cost effective, that seriously harm the environment, and that are inimical to the human food supply.  Steven Chu's beloved biofuels are a dead end technology, because it is even more energy inefficient and thus expensive to produce ethanol from cellulose than it is from corn.  Agricultural economist William Jaeger studied all forms of biofuels extensively and concluded that "Given currently available technologies, it is difficult to see the net contribution of biofuels rising above 1% of our current fossil fuel energy consumption – for either Oregon or the U.S."  [see PDF]  Steven Chu will be remembered by historians for selling the American public carnival snake oil solutions in the name of energy independence.  

     Many others deserve a place in the starvation hall of shame, including North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, Nancy Pelosi, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican) and former comedian, now Minnesota Senator, Al Franken (Democrat).  All pro-biofuel politicians are guilty of mass negligent homicide because they were all repeatedly warned by responsible scientists and economists that using food to feed cars instead of people would cause a major increase in hunger, both around the world and right here in the United States.  Being democratically elected does not make what our politicians do moral and right any more than it made Richard Nixon's napalming of villages in Vietnam moral and right.  Elected American criminals should be judged in the same light as unelected Asian and Russian criminals.  The election process is not a miraculous, heaven sent absolution of guilt.  Be honest; the American electorate usually votes for the smoothest liar over more truthful citizens who occasionally run for office.

     The United States television media is also highly culpable for promoting biofuels.  Incredibly, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft recently praised Brazil as being a "green" economy despite the fact that Brazil is burning down rainforests at a record pace in order to grow more sugarcane for ethanol.  For the vacuous mind of the television media, burning down rainforests somehow equals being "green."  The truth will come out in the end, as it usually does, but sadly only after millions more die of hunger and related illness, and only after more of the world's declining supply of irreplaceable topsoil is lost through erosion.  Rarely in world history have so many people been so guilty of major crimes against the earth and their own human family, yet have remained arrogantly indifferent to the provable destruction that they have caused. 

     It is currently estimated that somewhere between 43,000 and 54,000 people around the world die of malnutrition and related illness every day (16 to 20 million per year).  If Barack Obama and other biofuel advocates were put on trial for starving the world, it would not be unreasonable for a judge and jury to declare global biofuel production a significant contributing factor in almost all of those deaths, and directly and overwhelmingly responsible for at least 25% of them.  Food is a globally traded commodity just like oil, so those incomprehensibly large death numbers would be far lower if biofuel production had not skyrocketed the cost of food all over the world.  With a record number of Americans on food stamps, and more than half of earth's population living in poverty, the continued support for biofuel mandates and subsidies by United States politicians is simply beyond reason and sanity, and can only be explained by farm belt greed and political corruption. 

     The business model for biofuel production in the United States is essentially one of a government run crime syndicate.  We are all forced by legislation to buy engine damaging fuels that most people do not even want in their cars, so that a small percentage of the population can make more money.  All this happens without providing any energy independence value, while harming the environment and our nation's future ability to grow food, and with a body count so high as to be difficult to comprehend.  Our television media is owned by just a few big corporations who do not want to expose the destructiveness of biofuels, so the biggest crime in America continues as the masses remain ignorant of the facts.  Americans know food prices are increasing, but they don't know why.  Americans know federal and state debt is increasing, but they do not realize biofuel production adds billions to that debt every year because of the high cost of federal and state biofuel subsidies.     

For a complete explanation of why biofuel production is so unavoidably destructive, and to find better, more environmentally friendly energy solutions, please see The Renewable Energy Disaster.

Christopher Calder - nonprofit food security advocate
email = archive100 AT inbox DOT com