Tortilla Riots & Lost Land: Biofuels Foolish?

Biofuels are ostensibly great.

They’re renewable. They just might reduce dependence on imported oil. The corn crop used to make them has created rural jobs…They even offer politicians who want to be trendy a chance to show they’re sincere when it comes to finding alternative fuel sources.

But now, several studies are showing the ugly side of renewable plant-based energy; it’s doing the opposite of what its proponents intended it to, by contributing (yup, contributing) to global warming.

When chunks of the U.S. corn crop are diverted to ethanol refineries for biofuel production, the price of corn shoots up. (It’s now at record highs). Happy to cash in, soybean farmers swap–planting corn instead of soybeans. So then there are fewer soybeans in the U.S., and prices rise. Hundreds of miles away, farmers in Brazil, for example, are aware of this deficit in the global soybean supply. Eager to take advantage of the situation, they expand their fields by laying claim to what’s nearby–fields previously home to cattle.

Ranchers, meanwhile, are displaced.And where do they send their hungry cows to graze? The Amazon. It’s being deforested like crazy. Ranchers tear down rain forests that store loads of carbon. That’s no help to global warming.Another consequence of corn diverted to fuel tanks is the steady rise of food prices. In Mexico City, for example, sky high corn prices have sparked tortilla riots.

Flour prices are making Pakistan a shaky place to bake.

And biofuel efficiency is another topic of debate. Apparently, the grain required to fill an SUV fuel tank with ethanol could easily feed one human for one year.

People don’t want to think biofuels are bad; they sure sound sexy and green, but perhaps folks should re-think what they think.

.MGW.

~ by meagangwhite on April 4, 2008.