Poor Mojo's Newswire

Today (April 17) marks the third anniversary of the day the world lost Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year old woman originally from California who focused global attention on the fate of the thousands of civilians who have been killed or injured in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.... After leading a Global Exchange Reality Tour in opposition to the war in Afghanistan, Marla decided to stay behind to help families accidentally harmed in Operation Enduring Freedom. She arrived in Kabul only a few days after the Taliban were removed from power and organized a survey of the military campaign's impact on Afghan civilians. She used the information to get assistance from the U.S. military and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the families who were harmed. The day after Saddam's statue fell Marla arrived in Iraq and immediately began a door-to-door survey of civilians who had been killed or injured. In 2003, Marla formed a new NGO, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC). Although she became an innocent victim of war herself when she was killed in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad on April 16, 2005 at the age of 28, CIVIC is continuing the work that Marla started. Before her death Marla had successfully lobbied the U.S. Government through Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to provide medical, vocational and other types of assistance for Afghan and Iraqi families and communities harmed as a result of U.S. and coalition military operations. To date, $25 million has been appropriated for the "Marla Ruzicka Iraqi War Victims Fund," and more than $14 million for similar activities in Afghanistan. These funds are administered by USAID through NGOs, in consultation with the U.S. Congress and CIVIC."

MR. BALL: What should government be doing that it's not doing? MR. LUTZ: Well, to make the biggest environmental impact and displace as much petroleum as quickly as possible, and drastically reduce CO2 creation in the operation of motor vehicles, and create the least disruption to America's driving habits, there's only one technology that will get all of that quickly and at very low cost per car. And that is a conversion to basically bioethanol. Better corn strains are being developed. They're developing corn with a shorter growing season, which was going to permit shifting the Corn Belt way to the north. I would point out that vast majority of corn acreage in the United States is still not producing corn. It's getting $500 a year per acre not to plant corn. So I think that people who say, well, the ethanol industry is taking food from the mouths of babies and it's driving tortilla prices up -- I think these are highly suspect conclusions. General Motors is the world's largest producer of ethanol-capable vehicles. We produce over one million a year. We've got 4.5 million on the road and constantly growing. We've committed to doing 50% of our vehicles to be E-85 [85% ethanol and 15% gasoline] capable, and it's only about $150 per car. ... And the $150 cost per vehicle is really trivial compared to the mild hybrid systems, heavy hybrid systems, plug-in hybrid systems, clean diesels and so forth that will be required to get to the 35 miles per gallon using conventional gasoline technology.

We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits. "The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said. The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted.... Mr Diouf says world grain stocks have fallen to a quarter-century low of 5m tonnes, rations for eight to 12 weeks. America - the world's food superpower - will divert 18pc of its grain output for ethanol this year, chiefly to break dependency on oil imports. It has a 45pc biofuel target for corn by 2015. Argentina, Canada, and Eastern Europe are joining the race.