Say No to Biofuels

Small victories: Berkeley, Calif. discontinues biodiesel fleet vehicle use

While the rest of the world is falling over themselves trying to make money by converting trees into liquid fuel and burning it for endless purposes, the Berkeley Voice reports that the city of Berkeley, California, has discontinued the use of biodiesel in its fleet vehicles.  The reason is that when the biodiesel policy was first instituted in 2003, the supply came mostly from used restaurant cooking oil, but has now gradually transitioned to a supply that is farmed from soybeans.  (This trend indicates that overall, the supply of used vegetable cooking oil is not enough to serve entire municipalities. Sooner or later one must resort to farmed biofuels.)  Widespread farming of soybeans for use as biofuel is also not efficient at all, and displaces other food crops, uses valuable water resources, and required tons of petroleum-based fertilizer to grow. 

Berkeley city officials have realized that, "Although biodiesel pollutes less than regular diesel when it comes out of a tail pipe, the farming involved to produce crop-based biofuels actually increases pollution worldwide."  Let's hope other municipalities and governments realize this scientific fact before multinational corporations raze the entire southern hemisphere to plant their genetically modified fuel crops for recreational and business use by developed countries.

U.S. Cotton growers dethrone king cotton for biofuel grist

A story in the New York Times about how "cultural cotton" is now giving way to soybean and maize due to plummeting cotton prices and soaring corn and soy prices.  Interestingly, the article admits that the agro-industrial monoculture of cotton has a history of misery and injustice:

Not everyone is likely to feel nostalgia for a crop long associated with abject work conditions and low wages. Though a source of wealth, cotton was also a source of back-breaking work for slaves and sharecroppers, and later for poor farm laborers.

An expert in the article states, "Globalization has dethroned King Cotton without question, not only in Mississippi, but throughout the South and the United States,” said O. A. Cleveland, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Mississippi State. "  In the words of the great Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, misery is what takes place when crop selection based on pure profitability is placed ahead of tastes and local tradition.  After all, prior to cotton, soy and corn, there probably were a host of now-extinct and gone-forever native crops that fed plenty of people without enslaving anyone. 

Cellulosic Ethanol: Second Generation Mirage?

Hello Corn, Goodbye Corn!

Now that biofuels from corn has spelled disaster less than two years after the subsidies and programs promoting them were hurriedly implemented, everyone including the bright minds that devised the corn based biofuels programs are acting like corn is "old hat" and they knew all along this was true (they didn't.) 

Enter "cellulosic", stage left!

Government officials and agribusiness are now pouring mountains of cash and exuberantly touting "second generation" or cellulosic biofuels. Though still considerably undeveloped, it seems like another accident waiting to happen, at least to me. 

Vent, vent:

First of all, why do politicians and businessmen think that inedible trees will not need water to grow and will not encroach on land that is currently used for food as their cultivation grows and expands? Why do they think that using finite resources (water, land) for infinite purposes (driving your car) is not an improbable equation? 

Not seeing the forest for the invasive weeds

But never mind all that. Enter their imagined solution, fuel from weeds. This is called cellulosic biofuel. To that end, the pols and businesspeople have put zillions of dollars into research of energy-rich and inedible weeds that grow quickly and provide ten times more energy than grains like corn. The problem is...they are EXTREMELY hard to break down. 

The Nature Conservancy and a number of other conservation groups are concerned that the cultivation of fast-growing, weed-like plants will create large plots of unwanted, invasive species beyond what we already grapple with. No problem. 

Jungles of goo

The scientists are now genetically engineering plants that have their lignin or hard outer shell weakened. This too, could prove extremely problematic if these low-lignin, er, "weak" plants end up invading healthier trees. Wouldn't our forests turn to jungles of goo if the pollen from these cellulosically- challenged trees spread around accidentally? This spells the death of lots of trees, and the end of whatever biodiversity we have left.  After all, there is a REASON lignin is as resistant to breakdown as it happens to be!

Who needs biomass?

Also, I am amazed at the scientists who calculate that they can continuously remove biomass from forests and agricultural land to use for infinite applications, especially transportation, without completely degrading the soil available and using up all the potable water. 

Invasion of the cellulose-snatchers

There have already been serious encroachments of land upon native peoples and the use of forced labor for the growth of the poisonous Jatropha plant in Burma, palm oil plantations for biodiesel in Colombia,and I am sure, many other places.

Some solutions:

• How about making public transport better and
• find a way to produce zero-emitting cars
• give employers tax breaks for allowing employees to work from home whenever feasible
• Require MUCH higher CAFE standards on existing cars

E.U.'s biodiesel goals

Did you know that in order for the E.U. to meet its biodiesel goals by the appointed time they will necessarily have to import biodiesel derived from palm oil on plantations in the global south?

Read Biofuel Watch's 'International Declaration Against the 'Greenwashing' of Palm Oil by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) to learn more.

Wall Street Journal: Biofuel Backlash

...When oil barons decide there's money in drilling for scarce water in the American West, it's time for Congress to stop subsidizing an inefficient and thirsty energy source that soaks up more of that water. Ethanol has prospered on taxpayer subsidies fed by political panic ...(click here for the whole thing)

UN Rapporteur: Biofuels a Crime Against Humanity

BBC News, October 27, 2007 -

"A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger..."  Click here to read the rest.