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...dioxide when they grow, balancing out the carbon released when burned in cars or trucks. Using homegrown biofuels would help the U.S. reduce its utter dependence on foreign oil, and provide needed income for rural farmers around the world. And unlike cars powered purely by electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells - two alternate technologies that have yet to pan out - biofuels could be used right...
Worse, as demand for biofuels go up - the European Union alone targets 5.75% of all its transport fuel to come from biofuel by the end of the year - the price of crops rises. That in turn encourages farmers to clear virgin land and plant more crops, releasing even more carbon in a vicious cycle. For instance, as the U.S. uses more biodiesel, much of which is made from soybeans or palm oil, farmers in Brazil or Indonesia will clear more land to raise soybeans to replace those used for fuel. "When we ask the world's farmers to feed...
Industry groups like the Renewable Fuels Association criticized the studies for being too simplistic, and failing to put biofuels in context. And it's true that the switch to biofuels can have benefits that go beyond climate change. Biofuels tend to produce less local pollution than fossil fuels, one reason why Brazil - which gets 30% of its automobile fuel from sugar-cane ethanol - has managed to reduce once stifling air pollution. In the U.S., switching to domestically produced biofuels helps cut dependence on foreign oil, and boosts income for farmers. But in all of these cases, the benefits now seem...
This is all depressing news, especially if you're a corn farmer. Biofuels are one of the few alternative fuels that are actually available right now, but the evidence suggests we be better off not relying on them. But even Fargione doesn't argue that we should ditch biofuels altogether. Biofuels using waste matter - like wood chips, or the leftover sections of corn stalks - or from perennial plants like switchgrass, effectively amount to free fuel, because they don't require clearing additional land. "There's no carbon debt," notes Fargione. Unfortunately, the technology for yielding fuel from those sources - like...
...Wednesday's media defiance came a day after Denmark's security police (PET) arrested three men on suspicion of planning to murder one of the 12 cartoonists who drew caricatures of the Prophet for the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. It was these caricatures, commissioned by Jyllands-Posten to fuel a debate on freedom of expression, that caused Muslims worldwide to burn Danish flags and embassies and boycott Danish produce. It became one of the most heated chapters in what many were calling the cultural and ideologal clash between the secular West and the Islamic world...