President Bush is amazingly tone deaf on the outcome of his biofuel mandate. In an address on climate change yesterday he touted the legislation he pushed last year to require “fuel producers to supply at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2022.” He argued that “This should provide an incentive for shifting to a new generation of fuels like cellulosic ethanol that will reduce concerns about food prices and the environment.”

But this mandate has helped drive up fuel prices today. There have been riots all of the world because of the high price of food and the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity.”

Not only is the biofuel mandate causing people to go hungry, the environmental costs are significant. Today’s biofuel production releases more greenhouse gases than petroleum production and we are turning miles and miles of jungle into biofuel plantations.

It’s amazing that President Bush could be so tone deaf about the problems with today’s biofuel. Biofuel may work tomorrow, but with today’s technology is accomplishes little and hurts a lot of people.