The five myths of the transition towards biofuels

[Demeter]

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_siv_o_ne_070606_the_five_myths_of_th.htm


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June 8, 2007

The five myths of the transition towards biofuels

By siv


Summary in English of article from Le Monde Diplomatique: 'Les cinq mythes de la transition vers les agrocarburants' by Eric Holtz-Giménez - summary and translation by Siv O'Neall


Biofuels… The word already evokes the image of clean and inexhaustible renewable energy, confidence in technology and a power of progress compatible with the lasting protection of the environment. It allows the industry and politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to present the fuels made from corn, sugar cane, soya and other cultures as the next step in a smooth transition from the peak of oil production to an energy economy based on renewable resources, which yet has to be defined.

The programs are already ambitious. It is anticipated that the fuel coming from biomass will cover 5.75 % of the needs of transportation fuels in 2010 and 20 % in 2020. The United States are aiming at thirty-five billion gallons a year. These goals are vastly higher than the production capacities of the industrialized countries of the Northern hemisphere. Europe would have to mobilize 70 % of its arable lands to cover its deal of the bargain; the totality of the harvests of corn and soya in the United States would have to be converted to biofuel and biodiesel. A conversion of that order would completely turn upside down the food systems of the nations in the North. That is why the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is interested in the Southern hemisphere to cover their needs. The big oil, cereal and automobile industries and genetic engineering groups are powerful partners in this rapidly increasing mobilization of capital and the stupefying growth of the biofuel industry. One more reason to spread light on the underlying myths of the transition to biofuels before jumping on the already speeding train.

The five myths

1. Biofuels are clean and protect the environment


2. Biofuels do not cause deforestation


3. Biofuels allow for rural development


4. Biofuels do not cause starvation


5. Biofuels of "the second generation" are within reach


Biofuels are clean and protect the environment

Since the photosynthesis that takes place in this culture removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and since biofuels can reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, they are said to protect the environment. When one analyses their impact 'from cradle to tomb' – from the land clearing until their use in road transportation – the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are canceled out by the much more important ones due to deforestation, to fires, to the drainage of humid zones, to cultivating practices and to the loss of carbon in the ground.

…

The ethanol produced from sugar cane cultivated on land cleared from tropical forests emits half as much again of greenhouse gases as the production of an equivalent quantity of gasoline.

…

Industrial cultures destined for fuel necessitate the massive spreading of fertilizer produced from oil, of which the world consumption – currently 45 million tons a year – has more than double the level of nitrogen biologically available on the planet, which thus contributes strongly to the emission of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas whose potential for global warming is three hundred times higher than the emission of CO2 (carbon dioxide). In tropical regions where most biofuels will soon be coming from, chemical fertilizers have ten times more effect on global warming than in temperate regions.

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Authors Bio: Siv O'Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y and traveled extensively throughout Europe. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, N.Y. and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France. In addition to her own writing, Siv has also provided Axis of Logic with translation services. She has been living in France, first Paris, then Lyon, for 30 years. In addition to her political activism and writing, her life is filled with family, music, animals, reading, traveling and "anything that pleases the eye or the palate".

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[LongTomH]

1. More people need to hear this!

All the talk about biofuels covers up the human and ecological nightmares they will cause.

Thanks for posting this!

[Gregorian]

2. Population is the elephant.

Absolutely nobody wants to acknowledge it. Witness the replies I almost always get when I mention it. Oh no, it's not population. It's something else. And always something else that also relies on population. The longer we wait to address the number of users, the less chance we'll have of recovering from this nose dive. An exponential nose dive.

[HamdenRice]

3. The population problem is solving itself

Estimates of peak human population have been dropping over the years. At one time, it was thought the population could reach 20 billion. Then as birth control became widely available, for a long time, it was believed population would peak at 12 billion.

But as birth control becomes ever more widely available, as the status of women improves worldwide so that women can choose when and if to have children, and as infant mortality rates drop, giving parents the confidence to have small families, fertility rates world wide continue to plummet.

The latest estimate of peak population is 9 billion, after which it will slowly decline.

While 9 billion is obviously big, it's not catastrophic and it looks like we are likely, just by improving the status of women, to have a demographic soft landing, not the crash that many pessimists predict.

[glitch]

4. Population is only part of the problem, sure a big part. But greed and over-consumption play big

parts too.

[Demeter]

9. Not to Mention Sheer Waste--Especially WAR!

[Locrian]

7. I agree with you.

guote::Absolutely nobody wants to acknowledge it. Witness the replies I almost always get when I mention it.


Count me in. I've been saying this for 20 years. NOBODY wants to acknowledge it, but its true. Next time you are out take a look and try to see what "wasnt there" 50 years ago. I know a lot of this is urban sprall, but it still shows how much we are consuming as we increase people-wise. Its not JUST that there are more people, its that all these people want MORE and MORE.

[PATRICK]

5. Hair of the dog

The bio rush, unlike Carter's scoffed at attempts, has the permission of the fat cats. The gold rush is another pathetic, useless and corrupted charade. it is too late now for carter's solution. That time has come and gone. What we have now is the era when cutting the gas supply with stuff that will continue and hasten the climate disaster, the starvation for the sake of stretching out and consolidating the the remaining strangle hold of big oil. So greedy and insane is this that the Arabs who see their French wine cut by foreign water threaten to strike back even if it is in their long term interests as planetary abortionists.

Things that take up food acreage are idiotic. Things that release heat into the environemnt and encourage
wasteful use of energy are suicidal. Jumping on this bandwagon in place of doing what should be tried is a crime even in the short term(which is all that we have left to ameliorate a massive dying out).

[glitch]

6. I would add that cutting down our planet's lungs to create any ag acreage is idiotic

and suicidal. Off topic, but (biofuels made me think of the attempts to create it out of algae which made me think of oceans and how they are our lungs too) I saw an excellent online lecture about the death of the oceans and how much life and diversity and the actual biomass of life had already been lost before the 20th century even began. If you're interested:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-273169297340031210&q

I think our last chance was Carter/Mondale and when Reagan was chosen our fate was sealed.

Still, I think it's important to go out fighting, because I might be wrong about that.

[DarkTirade]

8. I'm not a big fan of ethanol as a fuel source...

however from what I've heard biodiesel doesn't have most of the problems you mentioned.
Has anyone made a diesel hybred yet? :)