Biofuels Coming With a High Environmental Price?

DurandalTree writes "With the spectre of global warming on the horizon, biofuels have been touted as the solution to motor vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions. But with biodiesel use on the increase, it appears a distinctively environmentally unfriendly footprint is being left behind by some of its prime sources; affected food prices are surging out of reach of the poor and rainforests are being destroyed to create larger plantations."

Comments

Re:Fairly simple economics

[hackwrench]

The economics shift when you consider goods that corn is a cheap substitute for in the United States due to subsidizing corn. When the United States subsidizes corn, that means that corn that would have sold elsewhere goes to the United States, driving up the prices of corn in those places. If biofuel causes the price of corn to rise, goods that would have been better than corn for a given purpose without the subsidy start looking better and better. That then eases the overall demand on corn, but it would help the most if the United States dropped its subsidy.