Slashdot Mirror
Biofuel Production to Cause Water Shortages?
WED Fan writes "Scientists meeting in Stockholm are reporting that increased food and biofuel production will place higher demand upon irrigation and water resources." From the article: "Demand for irrigation -- which absorbs about 74 percent of all water used by people against 18 percent for hydro-power and other industrial uses and just 8 percent for households -- was likely to surge by 2050. Many nations are also shifting to produce biofuels -- from sugarcane, corn or wood -- as a less polluting alternative to fossil fuels. Oil prices at $75 a barrel and worries about global warming are driving the shift."
Well then, it's a good thing water is a renewable resource, isn't it?
The only thing in danger is CHEAP water, really. Desalination can ramp-up to whatever volume you want, and most countries are located near an effectively unlimited source from which to draw saline...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What these environmentalists need to do is build a priority management system. This shotgun approach has got to end. They are going to have to decide if global warming is worse than water shortages, if nuclear power is worse than coal, etc.
Good grief! The only solution that the shotgun approach gives is for all humans to go live in caves--with the caveat that 5 billion or so of us dissappear (remember that farming and ranching contribute to global warming as well).
Between another series of civil wars all over the Middle East practically inevitable and daily production capacity already at a limit, oil prices are very likely to double in the next two years. Biofuel will be a good choice for countries able to produce it (Europe, US, China, Russia, Brazil, Australia), but a massive problem for regions already in agriculture hell (Africa, India, even the Middle East). In the latter regions, the need for fuel will press food production to drop further. Much of the fuel - especially from Africa - will be exported, too.
If there was no biofuel, the fuel consumers would be forced to change their lifestyles. The way things are, we won't, and the starvation toll is going to rise accordingly. Currently, it stands at 27000 - or 8 times 9/11 as I like to call it - per day. (Source: WHO)
blow your mind already
To reduce the demand for irrigation requires a whole lot of technologies, some cheap and some not, but the situation is far from hopeless. This is not about environmentalists, it's about politicians finding the political will to do something concerted and practical. In the US, bioethanol is largely a porkbarrel project. In Europe and Brazil, it's about energy cost and so more practical. Growing the wrong crops in the wrong places and spending a fortune on irrigation is stupid. Moving the US economy to dry States and then irrigating golf courses is stupid. And your post is stupid.
On the other hand, working out a plan to find the best places to grow biofuels and then, say, providing tax breaks to make it happen might be a sensible option. What is clear is that politicians need to be talking to scientists and economists on the whole energy and water issue, not to lobbyists.
Pining for the fjords
You're right that it's all about the tradeoffs -- and effective solutions will be multi-part as well. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't anticipate and try to mitigate issues with new energy sources as well. We want to avoid adding to the sum total of woes we already face, after all.
Biofuels have at least two really significant challenges that I know of:
1) It takes a lot of cropland to produce fuel. While some of that may be established cropland, lots of it is created by destruction of existing habitats.
2) It encourages industrial-scale farming, with all the concomitant problems, including the need for large volumes of water, large quantities of toxic biocides and fertilisers that cost a lot of energy to produce and bugger up the local environment, the tendency to monoculture with all its attendant risks (remember the Irish potato famine, anyone?), etc etc.
I know that technology is a useful tool to help us solve the problems we face, but we continually seem to forget that humanity has seen dozens of societal collapses through environmental strain which technology has as often exacerbated as it has prevented.
The article (ok, at least the summary) ignores the fact that we have oil-producing algae that grow in salt walter.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
This is not something 'the environmentalists' need to do - their job, inasmuch as they have any official role, is to do exactly what they do: point out the dangers, because that is what they are qualified to do, as opposed to eg. you. They don't have any power over what the politicians, businesses, farmers and consumers do.
And you are right, we will all end up in caves, the few that survive, if we don't all take this serious and START DOING OUR BIT. No of course I don't believe the bit about caves, but one way or the other, we are all going to have to face up to this problem. Not just the government or 'these environmentalists'; it is some thing we all must take part in, both by saving resources in our own households, but also by putting pressure on our governments, businesses and farmers.
And that, I think is the message from 'these environmentalists'.