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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."
Indeed - there's another resource we need to care about here. Viable soil is a renewable resource - but like fresh water, it has its limits, and is geographically quite limited in terms of cheap availability. By forcing the land to both feed everyone, and fuel all their vehicles, we place a much lower maximum on the population that can be supported by that land. More than that, by potentially stretching the demands on the land too far, we risk that farmers and companies may deplete or despoil the soil they use for short term gain before they decide to leave the market, making it difficult for anyone else to economically recover that same area.
That said, we could make better use of the oceans - but I trust our current free market much less there - the oceans have much more of a "tragedy of the commons" dynamic than elsewhere, with fragile ecosystems and high difficulty sectioning off properties. Algae on land-based ponds in otherwise nonviable landscapes would offer the most promise for producing biomass in a way that would not negatively affect prices for the poor. Algae can produce its own food, doesn't need to use much fresh water, can produce various kinds of oils, and could even be used as a part of foods if we are interested in exploring that. The only question is, will it be able to scale and pay for itself in terms of needing to control its environment to mass produce it? Given the history of livestock, I can't imagine algae can't be made efficient or be properly bred en mass.
That's just my idea though - and I'm fairly uninformed about the whole field of energy crops. Why are we currently pursuing the whole turn-food-to-fuel path anyway, given how wide open the algae field is?
Ryan Fenton