bio fuel/bio foe

A new report by the US Department of Agriculture has projected that the growing biofuel industry will use 27% of this years U.S. corn crop. Even though it is also projected that the crop will be a record 12.46 billion-bushels there is significant concern that stockpiles will be running low going into next, when biofuel demand is expected to continue its rise. Who cares right? I mean you don’t even really like corn so we might as well use it instead of buying oil from those pesky Arabs. Well let me lay out what is wrong with this picture, because there is definitely something wrong.

First of all biofuel itself is a tricky thing. It sounds so much better than petroleum and yet when you burn it, especially when it is made from corn, it isn’t cleaner. So there goes your ‘its better for the environment’ theory.

Well it might not be that green but at least it reduces our dependence on foreign oil. This is indeed true, it puts the U.S. in a more strategically secure position, at least as far as energy supplies go. When you can grow fuel instead of importing it from potentially hostile regions you are, at least in theory, spared from having to fight wars for control of resources. Of course in practice it is advantageous for the U.S. to control as many resources around the world as possible, regardless if it consumes them or not.

So a point for and a point against. Here is what tips the scale. Turning corn (food) into a fuel when people go hungry everyday in that same country doesn’t seem right to me. In the richest society in the history of the world many millions of people go to bed hungry every night. And it doesn’t stop there. Much of U.S. corn has, since the implementation of NAFTA, been exported to Mexico where it is turned in to tortilla. Tortilla is the staple of lower classes in Mexico and the main source of calories for many millions in that country. With more and more of U.S. crops been set aside for biofuel purposes the price of tortillas has been on the rise in Mexico, sparking widespread protest earlier this year. The Mexican government was forced into the position of setting a price cap so people could afford to eat. Is this really something we should be powering our cars with at the expense of so many peoples lives?

And here is the real kicker, cleaner and more efficient biofuels can indeed be made, not from potential food crops, but from others such as sugar cane or even switch grass. Look at Brasil for more encouraging approach to biofuel. It is developing the sugar cane option, I see no good reason why the U.S. should not as well. Of course I would prefer no biofuels at all and a move towards a much cleaner technology, but the U.S. seems incredibly reluctant to do this. And by the U.S. I mean the government. The population in general is clearly behind reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but since when does it matter what the people want?

Beware of those touting biofuels as some sort of response to global warming. We can and should do much better than that.