* corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
* switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and
* wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for biodiesel production, the study found that:
* soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and
* sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
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*'Là-bas si j'y suis', Daniel Mermet's brainchild, is a progressive ("altermondialiste") radio program – its title could be translated as meaning 'Over there if I am there' – the implication clearly being that we must pay attention to what is happening in the world. In 2006 this "island of freedom" was threatened by government-subsidized France Inter with being taken off the air. Within twenty days, 200,000 people had signed a petition to “Save Là-bas”. The protests succeeded, even though the time slot for the airing was changed to 3 o'clock on Friday afternoons, not a prime-time slot, by any means. Fortunately, the program's web site archives all the broadcasts, so anyone with a web browser can listen to them.
On April 18, 2008 Daniel Mermet interviewed Jean Ziegler, a French-Swiss national who until March this year had been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He is a senior professor of sociology at the University of Geneva and at the Sorbonne," Paris. He is also the author of 'L'Empire de la honte' (Empire of Shame - A Conversation with Jean Ziegler)
[1] Olivier de Schutter, Professor of Human Rights at the University of Louvain, Belgium, does not agree with Jean Ziegler on that account. To the question: "Are the international financial institutions responsible [for the increasingly serious problems of world hunger]?" – he answers a resounding "Yes. For twenty years, they have seriously underestimated the necessity to invest in agriculture – the World Bank recognized this at the end of 2007." Schutter was appointed on March 26 to be the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food by the Counsel for Human Rights, based in Geneva, following after Jean Ziegler.
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