Cuba's Castro attacks biofuels, proposes energy savings plan
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| Published on Thursday, May 24, 2007 |
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By Theresa Bradley
HAVANA, Cuba (Bloomberg): Cuban President Fidel Castro has called on the world to change its energy consumption habits rather than develop a new, US-backed reliance on biofuels that he says will starve poor people and harm the environment.
Recapping previous essays he has written on the dangers of biofuel production, which he dubbed the "diabolical idea of producing gas from food," Castro said that only an "energy revolution" will force developed nations to change.
"No one wants to grab the bull by its horns," he wrote in an editorial published Wednesday by the Cuban daily, Granma, the fourth he has penned on the topic since emerging from a seven-month convalescence to attack an ethanol deal reached March 9 between the US and Brazil.
Castro and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have opposed US President George W. Bush's efforts to boost ethanol production, arguing that two-thirds of the world population would starve if corn, sugar and edible seeds are used to produce fuel instead of food. Venezuela is the word's sixth largest exporter of crude oil.
Rather than swap fossil-fuels for biofuels, Castro suggested that governments replace incandescent light bulbs with florescent bulbs in businesses and private homes, as has been done in wide-scale electricity savings programs in Cuba and Venezuela. The shift could save hundred of billions of dollars a year worldwide, Castro wrote.
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