on Apr 1st, 2007
Biofuels will ‘ruin forests’
From BBC Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6516893.stm
In principle, biofuels sound great. You use a sugary or starchy plant and some chemistry and you have a fuel that can power cars, buses, trucks etc. The perfect solution to our dependency on the black stuff (oil that is, not Guiness!)
However, when you start using agricultural land to produce crops for fuel rather than crops for people, or you clear-cut old rainforest to plant palm (as is happening in some parts of the world), then alarm bells should start ringing.
Far from being the answer to our oil-prayers, biofuels may well contribute to hunger and starvation amongst the world’s most needy people, as well as wholesale species destruction in the tropical rainforests. The reason is that there isn’t enough land in the world to produce the food the world needs and biofuels too.
Now, even the oil companies are expressing concern that they cannot meet the UK target of 5% biofuel on the forecourt by 2010 whilst still protecting wildlife.
Food riots in Mexico
Already, President Bush’s highly subsidised drive to get fuel from the Prairies has triggered food riots in Mexico because it has pushed up the price of corn.
Governments face a real challenge - deep down, they know that they need to reduce car use, yet they have encouraged a society which revolves around the car - out-of-town shopping centres with poor or no public transport links, housing developments on green-belt land, again with poor or no public transport links. Batten down the hatches, I think we may be in for a rough ride.
What about diesel from used oil, like restaurants and chip shops etc? It is already being done and is helpful rather than exploitative.
Biofuels per-se are much better than fossil fuels in that they are in theory renewable and less polluting during manufacture and use.
The problem is the scale of the operation needed if all vehicles were to run on bio-fuels and hence the amount of land needed. Using waste oil products (such as that from restaurants and chip-shops) is a great idea, but there would only be enough to run a few thousand vehicles in the UK. The other worrying issue (for vegetarians) is that ANY oil or fat can be used - some people are looking into the use of animal fats!
There’s a bit more information on the biofuel issue here.