The Big Green Fuel Lie

[cal04]

George Bush says that ethanol will save the world. But there is evidence that biofuels may bring new problems for the planet
Daniel Howden in Sao Paolo


The ethanol boom is coming. The twin threats of climate change and energy security are creating an unprecedented thirst for alternative energy with ethanol leading the way.

That process is set to reach a landmark on Thursday when the US President, George Bush, arrives in Brazil to kick-start the creation of an international market for ethanol that could one day rival oil as a global commodity. The expected creation of an "Opec for ethanol" replicating the cartel of major oil producers has spurred frenzied investment in biofuels across the Americas.

But a growing number of economists, scientists and environmentalists are calling for a "time out" and warning that the headlong rush into massive ethanol production is creating more problems than it is solving.

(snip)
The ethanol industry has been linked with air and water pollution on an epic scale, along with deforestation in both the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests, as well as the wholesale destruction of Brazil's unique savannah land.

Fabio Feldman, a leading Brazilian environmentalist and former member of Congress who helped to pass the law mandating a 23 per cent mix of ethanol to be added to all petroleum supplies in the country, believes that Brazil's trailblazing switch has had serious side effects.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2328821.ece

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Another easy money frenzy is about to begin. Later on, it will be

all about, "How did we let this happen???"

[yurbud]

2. it would be a good stopgap solution to undercut oil companies while we get other tech online

[Sirveri]

3. No it won't. It takes more oil to make than it produces.

It takes more oil to plant the corn and grow the corn and protect the corn from harm from pests that to just outright buy a barrel of oil. You spend so much oil raising the corn it's actually less efficient to use it as a fuel and will in fact exacerbate any energy problems we're having while making big oil even richer.

[yurbud]

5. one of my students was a farmer and did a research paper on those numbers

and the guy who came up with them, Pimentel, made some unrealistic assumptions and inflated numbers to make biofuels look impractical.

Also, his school got a nice brance campus in Qatar, which probably doesn't produce much corn.

[robinlynne]

6. not so. that is what they want you to think. How much do you think big oil spends to get

that sort of info out?

[bemildred]

4. Fewer people and less energy per person.

That is the only answer there is, unless we can tap fusion/fission/the sun better. Any "solution" based on extraction or agriculture with no change in population or energy usage is no solution at all, at the best it provides a temporary "patch" staving off a worse collapse.