Have you ever tried to solve a problem only to discover that you made things worse in the process? This is happening right now with biofuels. We are on the road to disaster because the problem we are trying to solve has been framed inadequately. Harmful impacts from large-scale biofuel production are largely overlooked. And we aren’t even addressing the right problem! The truth can be seen when we frame issues in the context of livability.
Solving the Wrong Problem
Policy makers have been grappling with the fact that an excessive amount of carbon dioxide is polluting our atmosphere, disrupting global weather patterns and shifting the world’s climate beyond safe boundaries. The solution required by this problem is that we stop increasing greenhouse pollution levels. This can be accomplished by shifting our energy sector in a direction that ultimately reduces the amount of heat-trapping gases that have accumulated since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
On the surface, biofuels present the ideal solution to this problem. We can grow them in large amounts and the carbon that is released by burning them is equal to the amount they breathe in as they grow. This simple mental accounting is very appealing, but woefully inaccurate for describing what is really going on.
The real problem is that the way we use energy is out of balance with natural processes, driving us away from the equilibrium necessary for our communities to survive. This is evident in the planet’s atmosphere where global warming is running rampant, our cities are submerged in toxic gases, and the protective ozone shield is tattered. It is also evident in the biosphere, where we are in the midst of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction (the first in the planet’s four and a half billion year history caused by a single species - humans). Soils in our agricultural plains are lost to wind and water, reducing the land’s capacity to produce food. And our water supplies are being diverted, drained, and contaminated by toxic run-off. We need to find livable solutions to this problem.
A glance at biofuels in the context of livability shows how woefully inadequate they are for solving it. In truth, they will make things worse. The biofuels hoax, as ecologist Eric Holt-Giménez calls it, is based on several misunderstandings that arise in the language of the energy debate.
The Biofuel Myth of Renewal
Biofuels are not the clear solution they seem to be. For starters, the word biofuel is problematic. The augmentation of the word fuel with the prefix bio- creates a meaning that uses our experience with biological organisms (namely that they are able to reproduce themselves). This meaning implies that biofuels are renewable because the crops used to create them can also be reproduced. But biofuels are not renewable without dramatically changing the ways we grow crops and manufacture/distribute products.
Large-scale agricultural practices deplete soils, contaminate water supplies, and are vulnerable to pests and disease when single crops (monocultures) are grown in large fields. The widespread use of pesticides - manufactured using fossil fuels - is also contributing to the cancer epidemic wreaking havoc on our communities. Current agricultural practices also require non-renewable resources and utilize vast distribution networks that are very high in resource demand - including the need for lots of energy.
In some areas, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, entire forests are decimated to grow biofuel crops. The plant life destroyed in this process releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide as the dead trees and undergrowth decompose, exacerbating the problem they are meant to address.
Biofuels are not renewable! Soils are depleted. Water supplies are depleted. Highways and factories deplete mineral resources. Entire forests are depleted.
This truth is hidden by the blending of the concepts for living organism and fuel in the word biofuel.
Frankenfuel Monster
The word biofuel tells us that the fuel is natural. Things that are natural are considered to be safer than things that are manufactured. This understanding of natural tells us that biofuels are better than manufactured fuels.
The natural frame leads to two false impressions:
1. Biofuels are presumed to be good for the environment
2. Biofuels are presumed to be better for us than manufactured fuels
The first impression is false because of the agricultural production systems we currently use. The second impression is false because biofuels are manufactured in two ways. First, the fuel is produced through an industrial refinement process where ethanol is extracted from plant materials. And second, there is considerable emphasis on genetically engineering plants to be grown as fuel sources. These plants - including corn, palm trees, switch grass, and algae - are not natural if they are the product of intentional design by genetic engineering.
One area of genetic research that isn’t talked about nearly enough is devoted to increasing plant resistance to pests. With something like switch grass that grows quickly, the prospect of making it resistant to pests is a recipe for a super weed. The last thing we want is an aggressive weed that is immune to natural predators.
We shouldn’t call genetically engineered plants biofuels. They are frankenfuels. By tampering with plant DNA, we run the risk of getting further out of balance, possibly introducing new and unexpected harms like invasive species that take over croplands and natural ecosystems.
The precautionary principle, which tells us that possible threats with dire consequences should be avoided, automatically applies when the discussion is about finding livable solutions.
Myth of Transition
The energy debate has explored biofuels as a “transition” to renewable energy. The livability lens already shows us that they are not renewable, but supporters often reply to such critiques by stating that biofuels are a step in the right direction. They claim that biofuels are better than oil (in the context of the carbon emissions problem) and are a significant step toward a society based entirely on renewable energy.
This is simply not true. We are dependent on oil because the massive infrastructure of our societies is based on the use of fossil fuels. Changing over to a biofuel society involves building a similarly massive infrastructure. An honest account of this option includes this truth.
In order to meet current energy demands, we must grow crops over huge areas, build factories and storage facilities, redesign automobiles to run on biodiesel, and more. We would be entrenched in a biofuel society as much as we are now in a fossil fuel society. Either way, we are still dependent on some kind of fuel.
Feeding Cars or People?
Another kind of transition will happen if we invest significantly in biofuels. We will shift crop yields away from food production. Basic economics tells us that the cost of goods go up when supply decreases. The growing demand for grains to produce fuel has increased the cost of food.
The economic incentive to grow crops for fuels instead of food will drive down food production in the long run, permanently inflating the cost of food. At the same time, less food will be produced. This combination creates a situation where landowners are motivated by profits to grow fuel crops, which will lead to an increase in the number of hungry people in poor countries.
We are starving poor people to feed our cars!
This economic truth does not emerge in the context of carbon dioxide levels. Only by framing the problem in the context of livability does the impact on poor people become apparent.
Bypassing Disaster with Livability
The biofuels debate has been centered on the wrong question. The problem is not simply the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we address the “carbon problem” without recognizing the “livability problem” our solutions will fail. This is the challenge. We have to look at these problems holistically to see the impacts of our choices.
Addressing the climate crisis requires us to do a lot more than change from fossil fuels to plant-based fuels. Global warming is a problem because the way we live is out of sync with nature. The solution is to rethink how we relate to our natural environment. This is where livability is paramount. We need to be thinking about family farms, not factory farms. In the family farm frame, people are interacting with the earth to produce food. The factory farm frame has people interacting with the earth to produce money.
All of the problems with biofuels have been largely overlooked because of the way the situation has been framed. Experts have known about these problems for a long time, but public discourse has been too narrow to recognize them.
When thinking about the essential features of a livable community, we can see that biofuels will not work in their current incarnation. A livable community:
* Provides essential resources like potable water and breathable air
* Preserves these essential resources for future generations
* Provides food security (now and into the future)
* Promotes the flourishing of life (including the millions of species we co-exist with - and cannot exist without!)
A livable community promotes life. This means it is not destructive. Current emphasis on pesticides and herbicides, for example, are chemical killers that destroy life. By growing diverse crops locally, we don’t need nitrogen fertilizer that runs off into rivers and kills life in lakes and oceans. Instead, a livable community’s central activities involve growing food in a way that supports many different kinds of plants and animals. This diversity provides a buffer for the community to protect it against changes in climate (where some plants may no longer grow, but others will). In a livable community, energy is generated to serve the needs of people. A variety of ways to generate energy provides another kind of buffer against change. Some sources - such as coal and oil - will be phased out when they threaten the security of people in the community.
It is not even clear whether biofuels can be part of the solution at all. The family farm that supports life is inherently local and small. Introduction of an economic incentive to grow fuel crops will drive local farmers to grow ever larger biofuel crops, resulting in the pattern that is occurring now.
We can solve the “livability problem” by looking for ways to promote life. The carbon dioxide problem will get fixed along the way.
Joe Brewer of The Rockridge Institute.
Great article; nice idea; it’ll never happen. It could happen but I honestly can’t feature the “digital” generation, tied to their IT carreers, their I-Phones while zipping about in their autos listening to bad music and watching Paris Hilton while on their computers for days on end playing games, down on the farm in overalls milking cows.
Nope;
Not going to happen.
But the author is correct and leaves out a bit; corn based ethanol is the worst of the worst solutions; switch grass would be considerably better; the best of the worst is biodiesel, BUT, someone’s going to screw that idea because GM is going e85. Take it from an economic genious, there’s only one way to end America’s dependence on oil and that’s TAX! TAX! TAX! And by the way, if you think about it that’s the best solution to the government’s propensity to engage in overseas conflicts.
The problem with biofuels is that it’s a way to continue our unlivable car-centered transportation system in a period of declining oil. The problem is TOO MANY CARS. Whether they are biofuel-powered, hybrids, electric or run on fairy dust all cars consume huge quanties of resources,cause huge amounts of pollution and waste,create unlivable land use and housing patterns, accidents and many other ills. The solution is to minimize car use (gas taxes are a good idea) and invest massively in trains, light-rail and change zoning laws to permit greater density and mixed-use zoning so people can once again walk or take a streetcar between work, shopping, schools and housing. Basically a transit system as in present day Europe and the pre-1945 USA. Now the problem is getting federal and state governments to make the needed changes. And the public has to do its part and endorse the change away from car-centered transit.
Yeah, very insightful article. I hate the way it’s called Biofuels. Alot of people will think oh that sounds good for the environment il buy that and do my bit without investigating further.
Then we will get the old, you greens/liberals/hippies/whatever are never happy ! when we tell them it’s not actually good for the environment at all.
sigh!
Try hemp instead of all the other biofuels. Hemp requires no petroleum and has 25000 uses along with it. Now to abolish the DEA and legalize the plant already !
Another unpleasant little factoid is that here in the US, we grow crops in the Mid-West using water from a very huge underground reservoir known as the Ogallala aquafer. This water is largely made up of meltwater left over from the ice-age. We are currently using it 25 times faster than it’s being replaced. So, in effect, we are using water for irrigation that could be used to grow food to “grow” fuel for our ultimately unsustainable addiction to cars.
Another side effect of large-scale agriculture is that irrigation leads inevitably to increase soil salinization. There are already once-productive farms in both the mid-west and the California that are no longer usable due to aquifer dry-up or soil salinizaton. This is only the beginning of this problem. Once the aquifer is dried up and/or the soil has become too salty to grow crops (virtually nothing grows in salt), the party’s over. We are already well on our way to making this our reality. We need to be very careful about just what we grow with our precious remaining ground-water.
Ironically, I think that Mr. Brewer fails to reframe the discourse. Let’s assume that the “livability” frame serves our purposes. How then do we begin to envision where we wish to go and how to get there? What does a livable community look like, and how does it fit into a livable world?
Let’s assume also that the planet can sustain the level of energy consumption of the rest of the world (on average) and that all the United States needs to do is reduce it’s energy consumption to meet that level. How do progressives speak to general public about making an 80% reduction in their energy consumption? How do progressives speak to themselves about such a reduction?
Hmmm… It honestly sounds like the over sensative arguments about wind power killing birds and “ruining” the aestetic value of some landscapes. The problem with these arguments is that they gleefully ignore the fact that there are few viable alternatives to using biofuels etc for some sectors in the economy. Also, I would venture to say that the authors seem to just ignore the fact that humans are an inherently aberrant species that is never in balance with its in environment. Thus, it is easy make a comment about how some things we are doing disrupt the natural enviroment…
Honestly, one thing that pisses me off to no end about your run of the mill liberal green type (mind your I am about as socialist and green as it can get) is that most of your kind has little technical knowledge and or ability to consider situations in a complax and contextual manner. For instance, I see so many of your kind getting a hard on about Hybred or hydrogen technology with out fully understanding that it is not viable in terms of vehical durability,(half of the energy the car ever uses goes into building the car and when it only lasts about 8 years and average mechanic can fix it then you have a big problem) cost and any other number of factors. Ultimately, I would ask of you step back at look at the bid picture a little differently or if you want you can come over to my house and have a rally about how destructive I am for burning fire wood and grown apples and cherries in my front yard rather than letting the trees grown and letting my yard return to its “natural” state….
The root of biofuels abuse is a lack of civic responsibility, driven by the rule of capital over people, and made worst when articles such as this one distract progressives from the root of the problem. You might as well claim that cotton caused slavery in the old south.
It’s just like food can be done wrong and food can be done right. A great example of how food is done so very wrong is in the US. So when we criticize biofuels, instead of the real culprits, aren’t we sabotaging ourselves and inadvertently helping to perpetuate the errant system into a new frontier?
We are trying to reduce fossil fuel consumption and climate change. At the same time we are trying to emancipate the people from the rule of capital. We need an integrated comprehensive solution. Progressives are developing and implemeting a comprehensive progressive energy policy, industrial policy, public policy.
How about total costs in retail prices PLUS cheap passenger rail PLUS 200 mpg series diesel electric cars PLUS small independent farmers sustainably growing foods/fuels and other materials?
Imagine you are the child of a peasant anywhere on this planet. Would you like to have the option of carrying on your parents’ occupation, making a reasonable living at it, supplying the local community with something that truly benefits? Biofuels can be done wrong. But biofuels can also be done right.
We have to push an integrated, comprehensive public policy. It has to include a way to fuel the machinery of industry! The more general public policy includes universal rights to land, water and food, so the small producer has the option of producing biofuels sustainably, making a win-win-win for the small producer, the consumer and the biosphere.
No, biofuels are not an environmental solution anymore than coal is. They are only being pushed into arguments because some people are set to make money off of them. Solar and wind power are the way to generate new communities living off plant-diets and using solely public transportation involving high speed rail.
The authors of articles like this tend to be looking for a single silver bullet to cure our energy/climate change problems. The important point to make is that biofuels can be an important *part* of a broader solution. After all, biofuels are better than oil in one important respect: they do not transfer carbon from undergound to the atmosphere, thus mitigating climate change. The crisis needs to be tackled with a broad portfolio: energy conservation, better gas mileage, gas/carbon/enery taxation, increased public transport, better city planning, wind power, solar power, climate treaties, geothermal, biofuels, carbon sequestration and, yes, nuclear power. If we implement all these strategies, the planet survives. Biofuels can be a small enough component so that the impact is tolerable.
yay… bidelo actually gets it…..
glide625: You are correct, corn-based ethanol is possibly the worst choice, corn being one of the most fertilizer hungry crops grown in the world. Been studying biodiesel for several years and it is the best of the worst but that doesn’t make it good.
Are you really an economic genious? Golly.
Lets face it, we’re all gonna die.
The planet will too. Of course, if left to itself, it might take a couple billion years before it goes when the sun pops off. Realistically we can calculate the maximum potential energy the entire planet can use each year. That would be the total amount of sunlight that hits the planet in a year. Plus a little extra for the moon. And some that comes from the core of our little planet. As long as we don’t use any ancient solar batteries, we should be alright. Once we reduce some of the extra we have introduced in the last 200 years.
Maybe what we need is a CO2 credit card, issued at birth. when you hit the limit, you get to be fertilizer. No overdraft protection. If you have enough money you can go live in outer space. The problem with this approach is that all us Americans would have to go first. But then why not? We’re “special” after all.
Biofuel can be useful, but only after we have the problem under control, which means it may never be.
bidelo: was right with you until you used the N word. Nuclear should not be promoted as part of the permanent mix, but only as a temporary component until we can use these plants to “burn” the warheads of our nuclear arsenals.
When I first heard about biofuels- maybe about 30 years ago- I thought “My God! the americans have gone completely over the edge with car mania! Now they want to feed corn to their cars! And in the Global South 24,000 people are still dying of hunger every day.
Anyway the thing is no matter what you try to do with growing any kind of plants as car fuel, it’s doomsday for the planet. All the usable farm land in the world would be consumed to provide the oil we “need”. And look at what’s happening already- the forests being cut down to make farmland…
I cannot believe we have another prcik with some kind of twisted thougth that corn and other biofuels increase carbon.
THEY DO NOT. You CANNOT BURN MORE CARBON THAN THE PLANTS PRODUCE. YOU CANNOT PRODUCE MORE THAN THEY WILL CONSUME IN THE NEXT GROWING CYCLE.
THERE IS NO NET GAIN IN CARBON!
Joe Brewer, you pretend to be on the side of environmentalists. But I am absolutely confident, like so many of the false spineless democrats we seen recently, that you have your hands in the oil industry and on the republican site and it is your job to maniuplate this side of the populace to keep us without solutions as a means to continue our dependence on oil.
YOU CANNOT BURN MORE CARBON FROM CORN THAN WHAT IT WILL CONSUME IN THE NEXT GROWING CYCLE.
It IS a sustainable alternative.
REGARDLESS OF YOUR ILL CONCIEVED TWISTED LOGIN, IT IS A MATHEMATICAL AND SCIENTIFIC
IMPOSSIBILE TO YEILD MORE CARBON THAN WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THE PLANTS.
You maliciously identify this issue in your second paragraph, and then in the third you speak out your arse and tell us that the corn burns more carbon than what it contains and that the next crop will consume in growing the next year.
I wish I had a bank like that. An account (as is the carbon in the corn biomass) where you earn a hundred bucks a day, spend a hundred bucks a day… have another 120 dollars in the bank after your spending.
Those of us who understand the maliciouness of politics here know your game. You are doing this for some personal gain you have in the oil industry or investments. That is absolutely clear. You are muddying the waters to keep us from moving forward and keeping us on oil just a bit more so you can earn a few more bucks.
It is a statistical and mathematical impossibility. One minus one does not equal two or three. It equals ZERO! You are intentionally using twisted logic to try to confuse people in your third paragraph but NOWHERE can you prove that burning a given quantity of biomass will somehow yield more magical carbon that whan the same crop and same biomass consumes in the next year.
People like you should be prosecuted for disrupting our need to wean ourselves off oil IMMEDIATELY and stop the deaths of our youths.
And I am suggesting people do prosecute you for writing such trash to intentionally confuse people and stop them from moving forward.
Folks, go read Dr Suzuki’s website about our knew light bulbs. His argument is that yes, there is mercury in the bulbs but it is obvious we need to support those light bulbs. Solutions are built over time and in the interim we move down that road and improve the technology and make it better.
I have a great deal of respect for Dr Suzuki but absolutely none for you Mr Brewer.
Sure we may have some pollution from crops (like the Mercury in the bulbs) but NOWHERE near the pollution from oil and coal. And it is assinine to suggest that we wait for perfect solution to fall out of heaven before we do anything.
And so it is a step forward. What you are propsoing is that we wait until some euphoric unearthly solution some how magically appears before us. And in the mean time, I am absolutely sure you are benefitting from the oil sector and keeping us oil.
What you eventually avoid talking about is cost-benefit analysis. The move forward to biofuels is not ideal. Not yet. It needs to be developed as we head down that road. But what you intentionally avoid is a discussion of the RELATIVE levels of pollution. EVERY alternative will have some degree of environmental impact. We have a serious problem, we have place the alternative on the table. And now it is time to act. We take the best that we got, move forward immediately to stop the blood loss and re-evaluate in future when we have the luxury and our kids back home.
I am calling you what you are.
A wolf in sheeps clothing.
A two faced bastrd and a son of a btch.
As bidelo points out, there is no silver baboon wearing gold lamae handing out magical pills that will cure all our ills. Okay, he said silver bullet….
Anyway, additional points:
1) biomethane from landfills and waste -LNG for public utility vehicles.
2) EVs for the city and for local transport.
3) Hybrid-diesel vehicles for long haul.
Biodiesel, biomethane, ev can all offset oil demand. Biodiesel doesn’t have to be made by mono-crops. WVO for biodiesel and biomethane can offset up to 20% of the US fuel needs. Increase MPG, pass legislation for EV and mass transit increases in metro areas, legislate recycling, cloth bags at stores, bicycle/pedestrian only roads/lanes….
just some points.
This article, while probably well-meaning, contains fundamental misunderstandings of the issue at hand.
Before fossil fuels (First coal, than oil and gas) became the primary energy source for human beings, all fuel was biofuel - wood, cow dung, whale oil, peat, etc.
This resulted in the deforestation of vast areas of Europe, as wood was also needed to make steel. Kings kept forests as private preserves for this reason (not just to hunt deer).
Biofuels and fossil fuels are both hydrocarbons that were initially formed by solar energy and photosynthesis.
The problems that the author lists are all problems of our globalized industrial agriculture system and have little to do with biofuels themselves. If ‘biofuels’ had been replaced with ’soy’ or ‘hogs’ or ‘cattle’ or ‘bananas’ many of the same issues would be present.
The fact of the matter is that the entire agriculture system needs reform. We should have solar and wind farms provinding all the energy needed to run a farm (using electric tractors, etc.). 50% of the fossil fuel used in farming goes into fertilizer production, and there are ways around that using organic agriculture.
Thus, the author has made a large logical error. He has used problems with the entire global agriculture system to attack biofuel production.
However, one can imagine ethanol and biofuel production as part of the activity of a healthy organic farm, even on a large scale. Since existing gasoline and diesel engines can run on ethanol and biodiesel, such a fuel could be put into immediate use.
Combine biofuels with technology such as plug-in hybrids, and you have no need for fossil fuels whatsoever. However, in the long run most things will probably be done with solar- and wind-generated electricity
Ike:
It sounds like what you are saying is that the real problem is our agricultural system. I find it interesting that you claim the author misunderstood the problem and then you asserted his central claim.
My reading of this article is that the problem with biofuels is that they do not change the disfunctional energy system we have now. By changing from one destructive energy system to another, we are NOT solving the problem.
This is very similar to what you say. It sounds like you support the main point of this essay.
Until we address the root problem of overpopulation, no combination of solutions offered here will save us. We have plenty of natural resources, that isn’t the problem, we have a waste disposal problem. We need energy, and all energy sources; including so called renewable sources, creates pollution. If you don’t think so, remember all of that renewable generation needs to be created first and then maintained, that will take massive fossil fuel inputs. Don’t tell us about nuclear fusion, because it is still too far off to do us any good in the near term. We don’t even know if it is technically or economically viable yet. Over six billion people simply create too much waste and our planet can not absorb all of it.
Going back to nature is not an option at this point, traditional agricultural practices can’t feed that many people given our depleted soil, lack of fresh water and global warming problems.
Our problems are systemic; our technology, economic system and life styles are unsustainable with six billion people. We are fooling ourselves thinking that all we need to do is tinker with the current system a bit; using more technology and/or going back to nature and everything will be fine. Bottom line, we can’t keep our consumption-based, high tech lifestyle and continue our reckless breeding.
Psychologists have found that humans primarily make emotional decisions. After that we “back fill” with whatever logic and “facts” suit our purposes, ignoring any contradictory evidence. Then, being delusional, we get all self-congratulatory and pat ourselves on the back for being “logical and rational”. Until we learn to deal with that unpleasant and inconvenient truth, we are going nowhere, except into oblivion.
Thank you Badminton. I am constantly amazed that no one sees cars as a problem in need of removal. They are a bad model and I just can’t comprehend why we love them so. I have had friends in Chicago who would spend 90 minutes commuting each way rather than getting on a train or a bus and spending CONSIDERABLY less time. Not to mention the fact that, on a train, one can do something OTHER than DRIVE. Read, for example. Or, when traveling for vacation, spend TIME with one’s family or friends rather than being cramped in a metal box with one’s focus on DRIVING.
Currently, in Indiana, we are fighting a battle over what has been dubbed the NAFTA (I-69 extension project) highway. Strangely, this is supposed to be a title that gets us all excited about the value of the new highway, but NAFTA has been the death knell of the Hoosier economy and the highway will just rub the fact in our faces as we pump gas and sell burritos to truck drivers carrying the products we used to MAKE between Canada and Mexico. Worse, the highway is destroying family farms, cutting a swath through our undeveloped forest and over-running small towns. Worse still, we are planning to make it a TOLL road, selling it off to an Australian banking concern that has been compared, structurally, to Enron. None of the proceeds of the sale will go toward alternative transportation, but toward the further creation of ROADS.
I expect that what we are going to learn, should we survive, is that one reason we suffer such high rates of depression is AIR QUALITY. That breathing pollution and lowering oxygen content in the air we breathe probably creates chemical imbalances in the human body. We are already suffering from epidemic rates of asthma that did not exist 40 years ago. Of course, tires having mercury in their formula, and those tires leaving bits of themselves over every inch we drive, the asbestos debris left from earlier braking mechanisms…Cars are a poison far beyond air pollution.
We need to do more than consider new fuels. We need to change our entire transportation paradigm.
And if we MUST talk about cars, everyone should see the documentary WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? California had an entirely electric vehicle RECENTLY made by GM. It was a good car and people LOVED IT. Why do car companies claim that the technology isn’t here when they’ve already produced the vehicle??? Watch the movie, I implore you, and realize that what is required to take a major step forward isn’t a fantasy 50, or even 5 years away. The technology is available NOW.
as long as making $$ off this shit is people’s main motivation, we’ll never figure it out.
www.wsws.org
Well I’ll speak as someone who grew up on (and still lives on) a small family farm. I’m 56 and my family has owned this farm for 60 years. The last time we were able to actually make a living off it was 50 years ago, my father then had to suplement income by working nights in the sawmill.
I feel incredably lucky to have been a child in an area where our neigbors were also small farmers, everybody helped everyone else, and the term Agribusiness was not known. Since then virtually all the smaller farms around us have been snapped up and consolidated into monoculture.
We barely pay taxes with a little hay, beef and sheep on dry land (no irragation). If you want to keep small farms viable find a crop that a small farmer can actually make money at. If that is for biofuel so be it. It’s clear that we are going to have to increase efficiany, but that will come after the price of fuel is such that the market drives it. I belive we are there now, let’s use all the tools we can to get across that bridge.
Who killed the electric car?
Those interested in hybrid and electric cars might find the following book of interest: Electric and Hybrid Cars: A History By Curtis Darrel Anderson, Judy Anderson (2004).
The google link below is for a limited preview and not for the entire book. Still, a good bit of each chapter is there for your enjoyment.
google book preview
The answer could be: methane. We produce it in vast quantities through our aged sewer systems, only to release it into the atmosphere, where it strips the ozone layer. We could power our cities from it, now. For years the Peace Core has collected methane in the third world to power small villages. Bio-fuels as we understand them today are harmful beyond our current collective imagination. Think about a terrarium, where the gas exchange has to be exact and you’ll get a taste of the problem we confront.
John Thomas Ellis
biomethane is happening right now. I don’t know about landfills and wastewater plants creating enough to powering entire cities, but certainly the cities entire public utility fleet and public mass transit could run on LNG.
LNG
check out:
http://www.prometheus-energy.com/
Bidelo and rob.price - Let’s not forget vegetarianism - yet another good way to reduce the rate of climate change.
Badminton, Moses Cassandra….thank you for pointing out what almost everyone seems to miss, the automobile is a huge part of the problem. In addition to polluting like crazy and depleting an non-renewable natural resource, in the US alone it has killed 40,000-50,000 people a YEAR, for at least the past 60 years. If it were invented today, it would be outlawed as too dangerous and polluting.
OK, I have been a lurker - one who has completely enjoyed the dialogue going on at Common Dreams. But about this subject, biofuels, no one has raised the real problem with them.
In the late ’70s, fuel efficiency was the biggy. I was living in California at that time Gas-ahol was around. Gas-ahol was used to replace about 10% of the gasoline in the tank as I recall. I bought it.
Meanwhile, I was a chemistry major. I learned that any ethanol will have 5% water in the mixture unless it has been dried by some chemical agent, say Calcium Chloride (the stuff you use instead of rock salt in the winter). And, it will quickly absorb water from the atmosphere to make up that 5% lose. My car was trying to burn water!
No good can come to the car that tries to burn ethanol instead of pure hydrocarbons as they were designed to do.
Attaching the word “bio” to “fuel” is the biggest scam of all time. Burning ethanol produces just as much carbon as gasoline. It will do nothing to decrease greenhouse gases and will probably exacerbate the problem because of the fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides required to grow the least efficient per acre crop on the face of the earth - corn. The corporate filth who run this country are only interested in monopolizable energy. Anything they can’t corner - wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, fusion - is of no interest to them.
I hate to admit it but my view is alway through the money spyglass. OK, I live in Mexico, Tortilla cost have gone through the roof-corn being used for biofuels. I look at the stock market and stocks like PEIX who produce and sell ethanol have plummeted in value as their base cost has skyroketed like tortillas. This aint gonna work economically or enviromentally.
Mexico was going to pass a law: only white corn maize could be used for tortillas which would have saved the peasant farmer from heading for the border and made eating tortillas cheap-but it never happened, why? our pan-American trade agreements-oooooooooh how sweet it is.
John Thomas Ellis, you bring up an interesting point-methane. Just about every household creates enought methane to power at least 1/3 of their energy use. I remember back my long-hair days I had friends who lived in a hexagon and all their power need were met by methane - but they made their methane output be equal to their power needs which would be atypical for the current residents of the US of A. But, none the less where there are lopts of people and animals there is massive amounts of methane which is probably being wasted.
Hoboy! Another error-filled ridiculous rant on “the horrors of biofuels” by another totally ignorant person. Please, spare us the “people will starve” crap, eh? There is no food lost in the production of ethanol, the sugar and starch is removed and replaced by high protein nutritious yeast. It all goes to feed cows and pigs anyway, and they actually do much better when fed the dried brewers grains than they do when fed corn. Corn is very unhealthy for livestock.
But the whole “food for fuel” is a ridiculous strawman argument anyway — of course corn is a bad biofuel feedstock — there are obviously much better crops for ethanol. Cattails for instance, planted once, never have to replant, needs no fertilizer, no herbicides, no pesticides, and greatly outproduces corn for amounts of starch per acre. What people don’t seem to get is that before ethanol came around, the welfare parasites calling themselves “farmers” were growing just as much corn, but piling in mountains to rot, because of the insane subsidy payments they get for doing so.
What the author of this doesn’t get is that the problem isn’t biofuels, it’s industrial, chemical agriculture, and the corporate welfare system that supports it and makes it possible. Those farmers are going to continue to grow crops of one sort or another, just as they have been for decades now since the subsidy system and agri-chemicals came on the scene, and the soil depletion, air and water pollution, etc
were going on just as intensely before biofuels were ever heard of.
And what he — and others of his clueless ilk — also don’t get is that it’s a very, very short-lived event at this point in time. The whole reason for a move to biofuels is world-wide oil depletion and shortage. Very rapidly, the whole chemical, industrial model of agriculture will disappear, because the cheap oil and natural gas that
those chemicals are made from will disappear.
So — not to worry. Smile — be happy — the End is near. The End of cheap oil, the End of the glutinous Amerikan way of live, the End of the auto culture and suburbia. By 2015, China will need 100% of the world’s dwindling oil supply. But so will India –or almost as much. And since China has been very busy making good friends out of all the oil-producing countries, while we’ve been doing our best to make them hate us, guess who will get all the oil?
For the most part, I don’t agree with this piece. I have a big problem with corporations controlling the fuel supply. I want rural America do have the capacity to generate fuel instead. Scrap biodiesel and E-85 and go to straight ethanol. Keep corporate America out of it and let small farmers generate their own fuel.
The problem with ethanol isn’t the availability of land; there is plenty of uncultivated land in rural SC that isn’t well suited for human consumption crops but that is well suited for switch grass, Jerusalem artichokes and a host of other plants that could be used for ethanol. The problem is the energy needed to convert plant mass into ethanol.
Making ethanol essentially involves brewing beer (a beer that you would never drink) and then distilling it. It requires bringing up the temperature of the ingredients to 170 degrees and above for substantial amounts of time. To generate 3-5 gallons of ethanol you would need to bring a hundred gallons of ingredients up to temperature and use much energy during the process.
For the past few months, I’ve been working on a practical solar system that safely and efficiently converts sunlight into electrical energy for home use and for generating ethanol. I think I’ve solved most of the problems (i.e., generating high enough temperatures for efficient heat engines and collecting diffuse light) and I’m currently building a scaled down model of the system. Hopefully by this time next year I’ll be generating 10hp worth of continuous electrical energy. I’m trying to keep the cost below $5,000.
I hope that the anti ethanol stance doesn’t become the standard democratic party line because the benefits of generating ethanol outweigh the drawbacks if solar energy is used for the conversion. Also, legions of voters who stopped listening to the Democratic Party decades ago are very interested in generating their own energy and being self-sufficient. Somehow, though, I just know that that the Democrats are once again going to listen to the wrong people and blow yet another opportunity.
My previous sentence should read as follows: “I want rural America to have the capacity to generate fuel instead.”
Please forgive.
Well there are already a lot of comments to this article, I agree with Io Q. Lellity and purvis ames, biofuel releases too much CO2 into the air, and we need to focus on photovoltaics for energy production and electric vehicles, both for cars and public transportation.
Here is the problem that I see with biofuels. We have a lot of carbon currently sequestered in plants and a lot of extra CO2 that has to be pulled out of the atmosphere to reverse global warming. While biofuels as a steady state maintains a constant level of CO2 in the atmosphere, it is like someone who weighs 50 pounds and wants to cross a bridge that holds 55 pounds with two 5 pound bags of flour - throwing one bag in the air all the time does not help, and in the case of the atmosphere, a billion cars getting 60 mpg is a billion times 0.32 lbs/mile of CO2 which is a lot of CO2. Using photovoltaics and a billion electric cars is a billion cars times 0.00 lbs/mile of CO2 which is zero.
The amount of energy readily available per year from photovoltaics is close to ten times the available energy from all the remaining fossil fuels including coal, oil and natural gas, and is greater per year than all the available energy from all the remaining fossil fuels and nuclear fission combined, forever.
The cost to obtain this energy is a one time investment in photovoltaics, the grid, and conversion to electric vehicles, including public transportation.
We also certainly need to develop more efficient housing/work/shopping/entertainment arrangements so that people do not have to commute such ridiculous distances each day.
Human nature is such that sooner or later nations (and their masters, if they have not already done so) will face the fact that the human footprint on this planet is too large. At that point the usual thing will happen: the most powerful who have the capacity will take “the drastic but regrettable” steps to significantly reduce that human footprint on an immediate basis, so that some of the human race survives. This will occur while everybody else is debating the issues of this or that. Drastic action will be taken because that’s the only option that will be left…because reasonable rational debate and the blind irrational and psychotic lifestyle of consumption will have failed to provide any comprehensive solutions that can be implemented in time.
The human race wants to survive. It’s a simple matter with WMD and bio-weapons to reduce the human footprint rapidly enough to ensure that something of the human species survive.
The morality of this idea can be debated and taken exception to on many levels and that will waste the point of this argument, but it’s about the only option that will be left if IMMEDIATE _ACTION_ is not taken to effectively address the situation.
Failure to consider what I’m offering here for consideration is folly, the same sort of folly that has brought this human civilization (if that’s what we can call it) to this situation where it is faced with extinction by its own hand. These are the stakes that need to be taken to heart and utilized constructively and immediately to prevent what I’ve just offered from ever taking place. Frankly, if “civilization” means we end up living in toxic hell created by that same “civilization”, then technology and so-called civilized progress is simply not worth it, and the very notion of such a civilization being civilized at all should be called rapidly into question. It’s not civilization if it ends up making life and the living of it impossible.
Joe Brewer, thank you for your article it is one of the most truthful I have read on this subject and has few significant flaws to impede the main thrust and is exactly the sort of thing we, as the Human Race, need to be considering if we are to use our (much-vaunted but obviously flawed intellect) to resolve the situation we have created, and your article is of great service to humanity. I do hope that it is widely read and distributed for the weight of the prefix bio- is a powerful perceptive meme that will blind people to the consequence of making a decision that does not provide a true solution. If we are to have a true solution to this pressing problem, then our solution must not create a new problem.
How the human race will get itself out of this corner our “civilization” has painted itself into without resort to such drastic immoral action as I have mentioned escapes me though I spend a great deal of time considering the matter. But we must do our utmost to find those who can and will have the force of reason, the gift of eloquence and the passion for all humanity great enough to rise above the corruption that will perpetuate this system of living that is leading us down the path to existence in a world that is toxic and inimical to all life. Perhaps we should make more adverts that bring home to the world what life will be like when the world is completely toxic. Imagine an ocean without fish. Imagine stepping outside after you’ve put on your Self Contained External Environment Breathing Apparatus so you can have a walk in the barren deserts that surround the bubble you live in and escape the press of humanity that lives within that bubble. The Stillsuit (Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’) you will need to wear to reclaim your sweat and urine so that it can be recycled to keep you alive will be an essential item of clothing. The fashion industry will (no pun intended) dry up, as in such a toxic barren world it will be perceived as a nonessential luxury and an impractical waste of precious resources. The Spartan lifestyle will be the norm. I paint these scenarios to give an example of what people _need_to_see_, so they can and do imagine the unimaginable to get them to change their attitude fast enough to make the essential difference that will result in the advance of our civilization into a custodial society rather than the consumptive one it has become that spells our death. It’s achieve this aim for the entire human race or wipe out the other 5 billion people on this planet fast enough for the remaining billion to survive. It is coming down to this if we cannot come to a faster consensus and any other consideration that cuts across or denies the possibility of this ultimate resolution to the problem of survival of life on Earth is simply more of the same stupidity that has put the entire Human Race into this situation in the first place. The ideas and “thinking” that has brought about this situation also need to be examined, because they are obviously flawed, or the situation would not exist. The degree of honesty that this requires of all human beings is far above the pale that passes for the norm today…and the call to raise that norm above its current standards must follow from the example you have set with this article. The bullshit that passes for rational, reasoned and informed debate in the media of vested interests has got to stop and we must call upon every aspect and sector of our society to end the decay that is the consequence if rational effective solutions are not entertained, considered and put into effect.
To every spin doctor employed by the special interests I say to you: If you are not to be a murderer of the human race, then stop accepting the checks of those whose profits are extracted at the cost of obfuscating, confusing and perpetuating the paralysis of decent human beings. Get or create an honest job and stop playing games with reality. Start by exposing the lies you’ve been paid to create and propagate.
To those who are truly and honestly concerned with the welfare of the human race and the saving of our once beautiful world so that we may become good custodians for future generations and all life, I hope my words and these rather horrific notions I have presented provide some fuel for the cause.
Thank you for your attention.
A global, annual direct online democratically established cap on personal net worth could be made inversely proportional to the birth rate to give us all a money incentive to have fewer children to lessen resource depletion, pollution, war, famine, plagues, to have less species extinctions and more extinctions of plutocrats.
Please, the planet is fully capable of sustaining the projected population limit of about 9 Billion in a garden of eden fashion. All we have to do is require respect for the environment, and plant lots of trees. In a few thousand years we will have more people living off of the planet in space colonies than on the planet. Another big key is education, the more educated the lower the birth rate. http://www.libertyandpeace.org/liberty.html
To paraphrase the whitehousedrugpolicy website:
“Biofuel is a rigorously well-tested medication that is safe and efficacious for the treatment of fossile-fuel withdrawal and dependence…”
Yeah, right — I’m sure gov’t policy will be at least as efficacious in resolving fuel dependency as it has been in resolving drug dependency.
Mark Whittington–Since you are working on a solar set-up and trying to keep costs down, I wonder if you know anything about the feasibility of buying one of those solar units that are used to charge electric fencing, and using them to power a household circuit.
I have looked at these things, and they don’t give the wattage of the solar panel, though some models have a 12-volt battery. Obviously this unit would require an inverter.
I am interested in getting some solar power to my house, and I’m looking for ways to do this cheaply and in small increments.
I’m living in Athens, Greece these weeks and today, ashes are falling on the front porch outside from a serious forest fire about 50 kilometers away in the Parnassus Mountains. There are some 80 fires right now in the country and we’re suffering from the worst heatwave in 110 years.
——
Quite frankly, good luck, but I think all of this discussion is far, far too late… We might be able to delay the inevitable consequences of global warming with all sorts of strategies, but the long-term changes have already begun and I think, now, that it will have to take an enormous collapse of the world’s financial, economic, agricultural, etc., systems before any “true” change can occur.
Clearly, the present structures of the modern style of life is incompatible and far too large, too great, to compensate for the natural, environmental costs incurred.
I’m waiting for news reports about massive methane releases emanating from deposits on the ocean beds throughout the world, in Canada, and Siberia… That’s when I’ll kiss my ass goodbye. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can in my life to reduce my so-called ‘carbon-footprint’ and hope for the best.
More on Methane releases in our planet’s past:
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
Mark Whittington: Go man,go! I’ve tried to research solar stills many times but most of the information is sketchy or proprietary. Have also looked into the direct conversion of natural gas to methanol (or is it ethanol?) but this seems to be a particularly delicate proposition.
Concerning methane: As reported in Mother Earth News, approximately 5 million homes in China treat their septic waste in methane digestors. The digestors are hand built by locals using indigenous materials readily on hand and the gas is piped into kitchens for cooking needs. BTW - methane digestors’ reaction temperature is in the 85-100 deg F range.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative-Energy/1981-05-01/Sichuans-Home-Scale-Biogas-Digesters.aspx
Concerning bio-diesel: During a search concerning oil-bearing seed crops to compare yields, requirements, and oil composition I came across several articles on Camelina aka “false flax” aka “Gold Of Pleasure.” Can be surface seeded in the fall and is a good winter crop as it is indigenous to northern latitudes. Requires minimal cultivation and much less fertilizer input than soy beans and the oil composition is more than suitable for bio-diesel and consumption by livestock of the pressed seedcake.
The article made some seldom heard valid points, but is much too pessemistic. As bidelo said, there is no silver bullet and any future we may still have will be based on hundreds of components, and not just one.
Last Saturday, CD ran this article on Vlaxjo, Sweden.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/23/2050/
The carbon footprint of the average resident of Vlaxjo is 1/8th the average American’s while enjoying an equivalent (or slightly better) standard of living.
Seems to me, the lesson from this article is that the solution to carbon emissions is available right now. The technology is not lacking, only the will.
Biofuels can be made from waste by CO2 through Algae, and microwaving plastic according to several USA messages recently
Crops can be “fertilised” by electricity from renewables, a process first examined by Lemstrom in 1875
Contact for information on “Lemstrom” :- Prof Keith WT Goulding Manager: Cross-Institute Programme for Sustainable Soil Function (SoilCIP) and Head: Department of Soil Science Rothamsted Research Harpenden Hertfordshire AL5 2JQ UK Tel: +44 (0)1582 763133, ext 2627 Fax: +44 (0)1582 469036 E-mail: keith.goulding@bbsrc.ac.uk
ENN: Thanks for sharing a powerful essay.
Plenum: Thank you, too, for the distant weather report. Most people don’t believe what’s actually happening till it hits their own backyards. The frenetic rebuilding upon the same grounds further taxes EARTH MOTHER. I think of all those who board up their places in anticipation of a South Florida hurricane. Many then discard the wood (as in trees!), and begin the process anew next storm season. Great for Home Depot, lousy for nature, the true quotient behind stock averages.
Doubt whether this string is still being visited, but I’ll proceed, nonetheless.
Concerning Landfill Natural Gas: I worked at a municipal landfill and municipal sewage sludge composting facility and have some knowledge about the subject.
A “closed” landfill, that is, one that has reached its design capacity and is given its final cover will produce methane at a steady level for approximately 20 years and then will drop off fairly rapidly. At the time I left this job there was a realization by the Feds that the emmission of methane from landfills was a serious contributor to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and therefore began mandating collection and mitigtion of this gas. The most common practice today is to “drill” gas collection wells into the surface of the landfill and collect it in a chamber then release it at regular intervals and flare it at the point of discharge. That is, ignite it at the discharge point to convert it into the resultant components of combustion. CO2 is of course produced, but is a much less serious greenhouse gas than methane.
The problems with LNG are several. One is that it contains less BTU value that natural gas and is therefore not pursued by developers because it has to be spiked with other components to act as a substitute. The next problem is the same problem with any other gas - how to transport it. Given its lower BTU value and this reality there has been little interest in developing this resource, and so the industry standard practice is to flare it at the source.
The dual facility that I worked at had large electricity needs (the composting facility.) We were investigating a large capacity generator devoped by Caterpillar that operates on natural gas and because we had a readily available source of LNG on hand, this looked like a reasonable investment. Don’t know if that possibility was pursued any further after I left. The composting facility that we built for about 30 million dollars did not work and so I suspect they opted to flare the gas.
only HEMP is the answer
WHY IS IT THAT IN EVERYTHING WRITTEN ABOVE THERE IS NOT ONE WORD ABOUT DIMETHYLETHER (DME)??
DME THE FUTURE FUEL OF CHINA. CHINA HAS AUTHORIZED $128 BILLION FOR PRODUCTION OF DME. CHINA IS USING TECHNOLOGY TO PRODUCE DME THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PROVEN IN JAPAN.
JAPAN HAS MORE THAN 10 YEARS OF DME DEVELOPMENT AND HAS CHOSEN DME AS ITS FUEL FOR THE FUTURE. (AN INTERNET MOVIE IS AVAILABLE)
AUSTRALIA HAS RECENTLY MADE THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT IT TOO WILL GO THE DME ROUTE FOR ITS FUTURE FUEL.
DME THE NONTOXIC, BIODEGRADABLE FUEL NOW USED IN DEODORANT, HAIR, FOOD & MEDICINE SPRAYS.
DME THE FUEL THAT CAN BE PRODUCED FROM ANY MATERIAL WITH CARBON INCLUDING MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE (MSW), SEWAGE SLUDGE, MANURE, WOOD WASTE, AG WASTE, LIGNITE, COAL, SCRAP & USED TIRES, ENERGY CROPS, ANYTHING THAT HAS CARBON IN IT.
DME THE FUEL THAT CAN BE PRODUCED AT A COST OF $1.00 TO $1.50 / GALLON.
WHY HAVE WE NOT HEARD ABOUT DME??
OUR OWN USEPA HAS INVENTED AN ENGINE THAT IS 64% EFFICIENT WHEN RUN ON DME. THAT IS ALMOST 2 TIMES AS EFFICIENT AS OUR PRESENT ENGINES. WHY HAS THE PUBLIC NOT BEEN INFORMED??
WHY HAVE WE ALL NOT BEEN TOLD ABOUT THIS GREAT, CLEAN, SAFE, LOW COST FUEL??
DME THAT EMITS 31% LESS GHG THAN NATURAL GAS WHEN BURNED FOR COOKING AND HEATING.
DME THAT IS MORE THAN I/2 THE EMISSIONS OF ETHANOL WHEN USED AS A TRANSPORTATION FUEL AND 25% HIGHER IN MILES PER GALLON THAN ETHANOL.
WHY ARE WE FOLLOWING BRAZIL INSTEAD OF JAPAN A COUNTRY WITH PROVEN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY??
WHY IS DME NOT THE TALK OF THE NATIONS???
IT IS THE SOLUTION TO FUEL INDENPENDENCE, GHG EMISSIONS AND ENERGY ECONOMICS.
LETS GO DME (DIMETHYLETHER)
NOW ABOUT THE BIOMASS TO PRODUCE DME.
THERE IS AN ENERGY CROP THAT CAN PRODUCE TEN (10) TIMES THE ENERGY / ACRE WHEN COMPARED TO CORN.
IN A THREE (3) YEAR GROWTH PERIOD 3 OF THESE TREES WILL PRODUCE 1 DRY TON OF BIOMASS AND TWO (2) OF THESE TREES WILL EQUAL THE ENERGY IN A BARRELL OF OIL.
WHEN THIS TREE IS CUT DOWN IT WILL REGROW ON ITS STUMP AND DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REPLANTED. IN 3 MORE YEARS IT CAN PRODUCE THE SAME ENERGY AGAIN AND THE CYCLE CAN START ANEW.
EVERY 3 YEARS EVERY 2 TREES WILL PRODUCE THE ENERGY IN A BARRELL OF OIL.
THIS TREE REQUIRES ONLY 60% OF THE WATER PER ACRE AS AN ACRE OF CORN.
WASTE WATER FROM A WASTEWATER TREATMENT FACILITY CAN BE USED TO IRRIGATE THESE TREES.
60,000,000 GALLONS OF LIQUID FUEL (DME, ETHANOL) CAN BE PRODUCED EACH AND EVERY YEAR FROM 15,000 ACRES OF THESE TREES.
WE DO NOT HAVE TO USE FOOD CROPS TO SUPPLY OUR FUEL NEEDS AND SINCE THESE TREES WILL GROW ON POOR CROP LAND WE DO NOT HAVE TO USE CROP LAND TO GROW THESE TREES.
WE HAVE THE PROVEN TECHNOLOGY AND THE KNOWHOW, WHAT WE DO NOT HAVE IS THE GOVERNMENT GUTS AND WILL TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE OIL AND FARM LOBIES.
IF WE DID OUR ENERGY AND GHG PROBLEMS COULD BE SOLVED IN A VERY REASONABLE PERIOD OF TIME.