Growing Fuel is Not a Happy Prospect

(Before It's News)

The United States is still the world’s most powerful nation. In per capita terms it consumes the most and in per capita terms is probably directly and indirectly responsible for more environmental degradation than any other nation. Under the law of the United States of America 40% of food grown has to be used for biofuels. The theory behind this law is that growing your own fuel is better, for America, than importing fuel from places like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and other places with which the Americans do not see eye to eye.

This law creates two major problems. First, growing fuel instead of growing food makes food scarcer and therefore more expensive. When the policy started there were food shortages and these shortages did not affect Americans as much as they did Mexicans and with the world economy having such a ripple effect, even people in North Africa, where the food shortages were thought to contribute to the rise of the phenomena that we now call the Arab Spring.

The second major problem that growing fuel brings is that in certain cases, such as ethanol production from corn, if you assess the carbon dioxide emissions over the whole process, there are more carbon dioxide emissions if you fuel vehicles from corn than if you fuel them from oil dug out of the ground.

As the world population grows more land will be devoted to agriculture. We will have less land covered with forests so that food and fuel may be grown to feed and power the growing population. Eventually and inevitably our environment will degrade to the extent that it can no longer support most of us. The degradation will be accelerated by the increased carbon dioxide emissions from some biofuels. It is not a happy prospect.

Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, energy, global warming Tagged: biofuels, corn from ethanol, energy

• Energy Scorecard: Romney vs. Obama
• Tropical protected areas still in trouble
• Spill the Scarlet Rain
• Keystone Kops: During Pipeline Protest, Texas Woman Arrested For Trespassing — On Her Own Property!
• Fukushimama news
• 160 New Species Found On Malaysian Peak
• Thousands Of Bombs Dumped In Gulf Of Mexico Pose Threat To Oil Rigs
• Les anti-OGM sont les climatosceptiques de la gauche
• Urban Coyotes May Be The Beginning Of Large Carnivores Moving Into Urban Areas
• Burning billions