The dark side of biofuels
From the
National Geographic reporting on a UN report on Ethanol:
Biofuels Could Do More Harm Than Good, UN Report Warns
The global boom in biofuels is laden with environmental and social risks, even as it presents strong new prospects for mitigating human-caused global warming, a new UN study says.
The study also suggests that biofuels—energy sources derived from plant matter like corn or sugarcane—would serve better for heating and industrial power than for cars and buses, as is the current trend.
And the downside:
But the study, titled "Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers," also warns that an unregulated biofuels boom will spawn deforestation, deplete soil nutrients, and undermine food security by monopolizing farmland.
"The rapid growth in first-generation liquid biofuels production will raise agricultural commodity prices and could have negative economic and social effects, particularly on the poor who spend a large share of income on food," the report says.
In many parts of the world, such as Southeast Asia, biofuels businesses have already cleared primary forests to plant energy crops such as palm. After fossil fuel use, deforestation is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, climate experts point out.
And again, they are targeting one of the most innocuous gasses -- they should be going after water vapor which has a much greater warming effect but they can't so they target something that represents industrialization and growth trying to limit that...
No mention of the other fact that the wealth of the forest land is built into the biomass and if they harvest and remove the biomass, the soil left behind is actually relativly poor and only able to support a few years of agriculture before becoming depleted.
Posted by DaveH at May 9, 2007 7:14 PM