Issue #21

So What is Wrong with Biofuels?

13 April 2013

 

Yesterday, I saw a sign at a bank.  It had a picture of an ear of corn and read, “Soon corn will be as good an investment as cotton” or something in that vein.  Next to that, on the same sign, was a picture of the wing and jet engine of an airplane. The text stated, “One day we will all fly organically”.  I realized that the sign was making reference to biofuels and I was aware that there was controversy around this renewable replacement for fossil fuels because it is using land that should be growing food.

 

I know that cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, rubber, and sisal have been a reality since at least colonial times and maybe longer.  I remember studying the impact on third world economies of growing things that people could not eat, so that the resulting produce could be sold to developed countries.  I wondered how are biofuels different from other cash crops and why are they causing this controversy.  So at dinner I brought up the topic; this is what I learned.

 

There are too many people.  The problem is one of overpopulation.  “The world’s population is now more than 7 billion and continues to grow by 82 million people per year.” http://www.populationmedia.org/issues/population/?gclid=CLCrhNL5yLYCFUuG6wodZRwAMg . What had seemed to me to be a brilliant solution, use renewable organic material as fuel, is actually short-sighted.  It requires land which is not renewable and is quickly becoming a scarce commodity. A better solution is required. 

 

In 2006, The Children of Men, a futuristic film, explored the idea of a society where the population had stopped growing.  The film begins 18 years after the last child on Earth was born.  Schools and playgrounds are abandoned.  There is generally a lack of hope.  Without future generations, it would seem, arts and sciences are futile.  For whom are we creating? 

If human beings do not find a way to curb the population explosion, Mother Earth will.  Through disease, famine, drought, and natural disasters, she will shake us off, like fleas off a dog’s back.