Bonkers bio-fuels law launched today

So it's official. Starting today, thanks to some quite frankly daft work by the UK Government, a new law has come into place meaning that each time we visit the petrol station; we're all going to have no choice but to fill our cars with fuel that contains crops that are harming poor people.

"Eh?", you might ask yourself.

What's happened is that new legislation means fuel suppliers must meet targets for blending bio-fuels with petrol and diesel.

Made from plant products, bio-fuels have been championed for their potential to help tackle climate change.

But there's mounting evidence that bio-fuels are deepening poverty - poor people are being pushed off their land, are subjected to labour exploitation, and face spiralling food prices.

For the last few months, supporters of CAFOD, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, RSPB and Oxfam have all joined forces to demand that Ruth Kelly (the government minister responsible for overseeing the whole charade) sorts things out by introducing proper sustainability standards for bio-fuel production.

Almost 10,000 supporters across the coalition emailed or wrote to Ruth Kelly to ask her that this new law is postponed, but despite this the Government has still ploughed ahead. So, as we're sure you can imagine, with the laws coming into effect today, we're not particularly impressed.

In an attempt to get the Government to see sense, campaigners headed down to the Houses of Parliament yesterday.

They were featured on Channel 4 news last night in a report which detailed that even the Government's own research has found that if bio-fuel production increases in Columbia it may well lead to "forced evictions, land grabs, pollution and destruction of forests".

Thanks to some jiggery pokery, we've managed to import the clip from the Channel 4 website into our blog. Though if you've read this far in this article you'll already know the news isn't good, it's still worth a watch just to see some campaigners dressed up as giant ears of corn.