Biofuels

A lot has been made about trying to reduce carbon emissions and pollution by changing from gas and oil to “biofuels”. I support this effort. It’s good to be cleaner on the environment and such. And if we can find an alternative to crude oil to run our lives, we’ll all be in a better place. But there’s a dark side to this particular avenue of what I like to refer to as “Green-ism”. And it’s a very dark shade of green indeed.

The news is starting to fill up with reports of food shortages, food riots, rising food prices, and other humanitarian concerns all over the world.* This could be due to a number of things. Perhaps drought, pollution, urban sprawl, salinization, bugs, and other factors are hitting particularly hard right now. Yes, perhaps. I would venture to suggest there is something else to blame, however. And if you read the title of this entry, you’ve probably assumed I’m talking about biofuels.

Now I’m no scientist, engineer, chemist, or agriculturalist, so the science behind it all I’m unfamiliar with. Basically, biofuels are made using organic, carbon-based material. Plants and animals (including humans), are examples of such material. As far as I know, biofuels are typically made from either recycled French fry grease, or more commonly from staple foods like corn and rice. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

Now as biofuels are becoming more popular, they require more staple food to be used to make them. Steadily, more and more food is being used to fuel cars instead of stomachs. This can only go so far. Ultimately, of course, you can live without corn-engineered fuel, but not without the corn itself. This reality doesn’t mean a whole lot to us in North America. But in countries that are struggling to feed themselves (and in many cases, are dependent on us for sustenance), this situation is devastating!

A short while ago, World Vision, a worldwide Christian relief charity, announced that they will not be able to feed 1.5 of the 7.5 million people they fed last year.** A number of factors contributed to this, including the fact that an increasing amount of corn is being used to grow ethanol, probably the most common biofuel. This is a tragic statistic. When you’d like to help all you did last year and more, suddenly you lose 1/5 from the previous year. I imagine it must be very demoralizing for World Vision.

Also recently, the United States announced they could not offer as much foreign aid to starving countries as they could in previous years.*** This would be due to the combined effects of rising food prices (for which biofuels are partly to blame), and the fact that there just isn't as much food to go around (for which biofuels are LARGELY to blame).

Another dark side effect of biofuels is one of the great ironies of Green-ism. Biofuels produce more carbon dioxide than they end up saving. Not in terms of vehicle exhaust, of course, but in how they are grown. The land that needs to be cleared, tilled, and harvested, holds a great amount of CO2 in the soil. When this is released from the soil, the quantities that enter the atmosphere are greater than the quantities released from the burning of gas and oil. So while they are meant to reduce emissions, they end up making a bad problem even worse.****

And now this article from the BBC, released just today. It seems that even the United Nonsense is catching on here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7381392.stm

Now THAT'S what I call an inconvenient truth!!!

-Bernier

*http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23599517-28737,00.html?from=public_rss
**http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/23/worldvision-cut.html?ref=rss
***http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/world/29food.html
****http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080209/biofuel_crops_ 080209/20080209