Peer calls Jewish activist “Hitler Youth”.

Obviously far more offensive than (in the States) changing land use from food to biofuels and (in developing countries) clearing forest for palm oil (for biofuels), raising world food prices and thus causing some poor people to die. The EU, by mandating 10% biofuel in every gallon of unleaded we buy, has blood on its hands – as do we every time we fill up.

Now there’s a debate to be had about how much the doubling of food prices in the last few years is down to biofuels – the World Bank said 75%, OECD just said ‘is significant’ and forcast further increases of between 5 and 20% in the next 10 years. But these aren’t negligible increases. The poorest will starve – it’s just a question of how many.

Not only that, but ripping up tropical forest to grow palm oil doesn’t look to me like a solution that’s actually going to reduce our carbon footprint.

I thought these were the sort of issues Lib Con might care about. But obviously, a Tory being on the right side of an argument doesn’t count for much against the chance to take a poke at him.

Hey, Laban (and hey Lord Monckton, while we’re at it)…

You’re right that “ripping up tropical forest to grow palm oil doesn’t look to me like a solution that’s actually going to reduce our carbon footprint”, and that making fuel ethanol out of food corn is madness. But most environmentalists would agree with you. But climate change and biofuel sourcing are DIFFERENT ISSUES. How Monckton goes from “Biofuels are affecting food crop prices”, which is true, to “Not because there’s been any global warming”, which is egregiously false is beyond me.

He’s taken an issue with which most environmental activists would agree is a problem and used it to attack those same activists – a textbook strawman. It’s blinkered, ideological lunacy on his part.

Laban – Yes, and? The article isn’t about whether or not biofuels are a good thing. It’s about someone having a highly inappropriate response (putting it mildly!) to criticism on the topic. Lord Monckton could have debated using facts & statistics, or simply said he was not interested in debating with this particular person at this particular time. Instead he slung around a really loaded term that had nothing to do with anything remotely relating to the topic (seriously – I’m sitting here trying to connect the Hitler Youth & biofuels &… I got nothin’) & rants incoherently about climate change.

There’s a reason that comparing something to the Nazis in an online debate means you are considered to have lost by default – it’s a sign that you have no other points to base your argument on. If this is the anti-biofuel side’s idea of a spokesman… you guys need to work on your strategy a little.

Anyone on either side of the climate debate who likens their opponents to Nazis is an obnoxious fuckwit.

Poor old Ken Livingstone got in the neck when he used the same comparrison. The Right wing press label him an anti semite, yet for some reason, the Tory press have been reluctant to smear the Tory in the same fashion.

Indeed. Biofuels (in their current, derived-from-edible-crops format at least) have everything to do with farm lobbies and nothing to do with environmentalism; anyone who claims that climate change activists have any responsibility at all for them is either dishonest or ill-informed.

Oh come on – lefties call their opponents Nazis all the time – it’s standard political ammo.

Get over it

“many of my friends are Jewish”

awful argument, they died on their arse, they are right and Lord (or Sir, as he was called by some of the activists) Monckton is wrong, yet they died on their arses.