DID YOU KNOW?...
The amount of corn required to fill a 4X4 tank with biofuel would feed a child for a year – that’s a staggering 1,000 meals, or the equivalent of 40 meals in every gallon of biofuel.
Using industrial biofuels means putting poor people’s food into rich people’s cars ... in a world where one billion people are hungry, this is simply wrong.
ActionAid's campaign against biofuels - explained
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Back in September I attended two days of training with ActionAid Activista in London. A group of young people from Universities across the UK met to learn about the new biofuels campaign and look at ways to campaign on campus, gain signatures for our petition and lobby our local MP. It was a really great experience and I was enthused about going back to Southampton and shouting "Bollocks to Poverty!" and trying to encourage people to sign up to be a part of an Activista group in Southampton. I massively failed though...
James Blair from the ActionAid office came down for our stall during freshers week at the end of September and together we managed to sign up a good 50-60 people, of which I was hoping at least 3/4 people would attend the first meeting. I booked the room for the meeting, spread the word, bought some chocolates and capri-suns for refreshments and eagerly planned what would happen in the first meeting...I planned away and the evening of the meeting arrived. I convinced a friend to come along for moral support and to find out more, and we headed to meet people on campus...after 15 minutes only one person had turned up. I was gutted, at the time I thought that I had done enough to rally the troups to be a part of Activista. This blow knocked me off course for a while. I was convinced noone wanted to be a part of it, I thought I had done enough to get people interested and I decided for the simple reason of not having the time to spend organising things on my own I would back off for a bit and try and spend my time in a different way.
However recently I have seen the great things that other Activista groups are up to and I realised that I most definitely have not tried everything and I am now more determined than ever to get University of Southampton Activista group up and running properly. I graduate in July and I really want this campaign to run on campus. I don't want to let my fellow Activistas from across the UK and across the world down!
I have spent a lot of time recently learning more about biofuels so that I am able to tell people more about this campaign. I am determined to inform students at the University of Southampton about the negative impacts that the use of them can have, even if I am doing it as a one man band! I would also encourage anybody reading this to learn more and look to join the biofuel debate. It would also be great if you could email the UK Secretary of State for Transport now to remind him that biofuels cause hunger and climate change!
Do something about it TODAY! Don't be a biofool! Understand the impact of biofuels and shout Bollocks to Poverty! Don't let anyone else be pushed into a life of hunger! Use your voice, stand up and shout out, tell the Secretary of State that this is unacceptable...
Continue the fight for a HungerFree world. Help put the brakes on biofuel production by demanding Zero Meals Per Gallon
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