Posted on July 31, 2008 by Gerald Pugliese
He said the biofuels industry is working hard to ensure it is responsible and sustainable - claiming other industries are lagging far behind their efforts.
"Government should stop hiding behind tabloids and have the courage to encourage an industry that has done more than anybody to put the safeguards in place and to make a real contribution," Mr Hilton added.
Environmental Data Interactive Exchange wants to know what our readers think about Mr Hilton's argument.
Is the "fuel or food" debate redundant? Is it hijacking the debate about biofuels when there are other more important issues that should be discussed? Or are food prices a central concern when it comes to biofuels?
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"Mr. Johnson has consistently chosen special interests over the American people's interests in protecting health and safety," Sen. Barbara Boxer of California told reporters. "He has become a secretive and dangerous ally of polluters and we cannot stand by and allow more damage to be done."
Boxer, who heads the environment committee, said Johnson had made damaging decisions on mercury, lead, toxic chemicals, drinking water standards, ozone air pollution and global warming.
She said these decisions were "harmful to the American people."
Boxer noted that last year, Johnson denied California's request for federal permission -- known as a waiver -- to impose tough new limits on climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions from cars and light trucks. That decision effectively blocked as many as 18 other states from doing the same.
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Derek Mueller, a research at Trent University, was careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn't rebuilding ice sheets.
"We're in a different climate now," he said. "It's not conducive to regrowing them. It's a one-way process."
Mueller said the sheet broke away last week from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's far north. He said a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002 and a survey this spring found a network of fissures.
The sheet is the biggest piece shed by one of Canada's six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005 from the coast of Ellesmere, about 500 miles from the North Pole.
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface. Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s.
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