By IANS,
Rio de Janeiro :Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has proposed a “global pact” to promote use of biofuels to offset the impact of climate change and hold runaway petroleum prices.
“We’re offering the world the certainty that it’s possible to create a non-polluting fuel and we can advance to second and third generation ethanol,” EFE news agency quoted Lula as telling newspersons Monday.
The president blamed the rich countries for the “failure” of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse emissions.
“Everyone signed it (the Kyoto Protocol), but whoever had to take measures to comply with it refused to endorse it. We’re the ones who endorsed it,” he said.
By using sugar-based ethanol Brazil reduced greenhouse emissions in the country by 800 million tonnes, he said.
He dismissed the argument of some leaders as unfounded that diversion of agricultural land from food crops to cash crops to produce biofuels has created the current food crisis and said improved technology and best practices could easily make up for the diversion of land to biofuels.
He insisted that biofuels are the solution to the problem of global warming.
Lula said that “South America is becoming an ever more indispensable interlocutor” to help the world “combine food security, adequate energy supply and preservation of the environment”.
Brazil will hold Nov 20-21 in Sao Paulo an international conference to review global food position and inflation and “the new energy matrix needed to depollute such a polluted planet,” he said.