Fuel choices, food crises and finger-pointing
- added April 17, 2008
- 11 responses
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- arianareg
- added this
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- related topics
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- Collective Journalism (1668)
- Biofuel (76)
- Food Fight Special (23)
New York Times Article about the causes behind the soaring price of food around the world.
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No crappy 'biodiesel' for me thanks.
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If anything we need algae-based biofuels to continue to be developed, not corn and soy based fuels. What is the rationalization of using food to make fuel for our vehicles? It seems so backwards. Algae is the way to go, in my opinion, at least in the realm of biofuels.
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Thank you for this article arianareg. We must be able to use biofuels to get off oil and become carbon neutral. We need to continue to subsidize biofuels as long as the big oil companies continue to receive their gigantic subsidies. "The subsidies for oil and other non-renewable sources are massive and hidden in a myriad of ways in our income tax structure."....David Blume We must make sure the biofuels are from proper sources and are created by using renewable electricity. There are at least 28 different soures for making alcohol to run an engine and there is algae for biodiesel (plus others). One of the reasons food prices have gone up is because of the cost of fertilizer, which is a petroleum product. This is a exceptional journalism: EXPOSE: Cash Cows and Cowboy Starter Kits. I'd encourage everyone to watch the whole video or read the transcipt. 'In Texas, as recently as 2005, 37 million dollars was paid out to owners whose land was once planted with RICE but is no longer.' (i.e. many of these people just have a mansion in the middle of acres of land that used to be planted in rice but now are growing NOTHING and are still paid a huge subsidy just beause they own the land. They make more money NOT FARMING the land then by farming it. It's a total rip-off to everyone). 'Nationally, over 1.3 billion dollars over six years had been paid to people who were doing no farming at all.' -
I hate this. The people want a cleaner car to improve the environment and what do car companies do? Instead of developing battery tech (which only few do) or hydrogen tech (with only bmw is doing), they take the cheap and easy way out: replace oil with another type of fuel. People think "hey, its not gas, it must be good" but its not. It doesn't only destroy the environment - it also increases hunger! NOT. HELPING. I hope this is reported on more and more before we're forced into an even more destructive fuel source.
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Article cites Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank as adding to food crisis.
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David Blume explores the myth: THERE ISN'T ENOUGH LAND TO GROW CROPS FOR BOTH FOOD AND FUEL in Chapter 2 of his book Alcohol Can Be A Gas. I will try to paraphrase some of it. "The whole issue of food vs fuel BECOMES MOOT WHEN A NEW ALCOHOL FEEDSTOCK IS CONSIDERED: CELLULOSE. Cellulose is the tough basic fiber that makes up the great majority of plant matter....for every pound of corn grain, there are two and a half pounds of cellulosic corn stalk and more than four pounds of cellulosic root matter. Crops such as hemp, sudan grass, switchgrass, and many fast growing trees can be grown for high yield alcohol per acre, even on land that isn't considered cropland or farmland.... At 5,000+ gallons/acre, the US might use less than 15% of it's prime cropland TO SERVE ALL OF IT'S TRANSPORTATION FUEL NEEDS.'
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if we were to use algae on a large enough scale to substiute for corn wouldn't we have to farm the oceans to get it? I'm not sure but wouldn't that devastate the ecology of the oceans? Why don't we just work on reducing?
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"Reduction is addictive too"
Algae and cellulosic ethanol are both false solutions, serving the needs of those who could change, but would rather not. -
Perverting nature is never going to work. What's the next unintended consequence going to be switching to algae, switchgrass, yard waste, hemp, etc.?
The only reason people in power push ethanol is to preserve the business model of sending you to the pump to give them money for fuel.
For the trillion dollar cost of the Iraq war we could have developed a feasible electric car for everyone. -
Or for much less than a trillion dollars, we could get America on bikes.
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From the looks of these posts I don't think we will fall for it again. Thanks to all! ...and let's keep putting pressure on them!
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