Biofuels: humanitarian and environmental disaster

[Rob Lister]

Somebody bought a Green a calculator.

Somebody taught him how to use it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1357461,00.html

snip:

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the UK. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

 

[Michael Redman]

We're already perfectly willing to see other people starve. The future looks bright.

Here in Minnesota, gasoline must contain 10% alcohol. Sure, it burns a little cleaner, but the farm equipment growing the corn isn't burning alcohol (and doesn't have a catalytic converter, etc.) It's nothing but a farm subsidy.

 

[kookbreaker]

Heck, I've known this for ages. At least for the US. Did the calculations when I was countering the claims of Hemp-heads who declared that Hemp should be grown to power our cars. They got real quiet when I pointed out that corn grew more energy per acre and there wasn't even enough of that in the USA to fill our needs.

That didn't even touch the logistical problems with biodiesel.

The info was such a simple calcualtion, I was surprised no one had done it before.

Not that there isn't some use for Biodiesel.