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:Happened in the past with renewables

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't the penultimate biofuel be used in a renewable reactor that produces ~1hp or a horse?

Re:People don't really care

[planckscale]

Someone needs to develop a computer sized CO2 "eater and digester" that geeks could mod and run to produce a non toxic by-product. That way, they could say, yeah my CO2 footprint is 4000 carbon credits a year, but check out my over-clocked CO2 converter that runs on water, fertilizes my hydroponics and leaves me with a -2000 credits per year!!

Re:People don't really care

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple answer is to reduce energy usage, but people don't want to.

The simple answer is to reduce the number of people, but they don't want to stop having sex.

Soylent Green

[apepooooop]

Soylent Green enough said.

Re:Happened in the past with renewables

[Burz]

You're going to need better social skills than that when your suburb becomes too expensive and you have to move to the city.

Re:Happened in the past with renewables

[toddhisattva]

This is why shifting as much transportation to solar and wind as possible makes much more sense that biofuels.

Your scheme means we would need to raise every overpass by three meters so as to allow the masts to pass under. So far, so good.

Imagine the convenience of replacing automatic transmissions with automatic rigging managers to hoist the proper sails and set them for efficient travel. This will create jobs somehow. Great!

We'll need to do something with the Rockies and other mountain ranges. Large windmills at the top can drive pull-chains to which landsailors can attach their sailcars for an assisted portage.

Cities draped over God's Hills will use huge solar collectors to power their pull-chains.

Eventually, we will replace the metal and fiberglass and oil-derived platics in cars with natural alternatives made from hemp. Fiberweed is the future! Hemp rope will replace the evil refined metals in the pull chains.

And the hemp tops will help us forget what civilization was like.