Word: oils
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...promise of biofuels like ethanol is that they will someday help the world grow its way out of its addiction to oil. Nine billion gallons of corn ethanol were produced in the U.S. in 2008, while countries like Brazil have already widely replaced gasoline with ethanol from sugar cane and countless start-ups are working to bring cellulosic and other second-generation biofuels to market. The reasoning is that if we use greener biofuels in place of gasoline, it will significantly enhance our effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions...
...problem is that biofuels are treated as if they were 100% carbon neutral, even though they are clearly not. When ethanol is burned, for instance, it still releases CO2 into the atmosphere. After all, the plants that go to make biofuels are made of carbon, just as oil and other fossil fuels are. Further, the use of biofuels would reduce total greenhouse-gas emissions only if their creation were to increase - or at least not displace - existing plant growth, which naturally takes carbon out of the atmosphere. For example, if the wood chips left over from logging were used...
...There may be plenty of room for debate as to how we transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels -- we all understand there's no silver bullet to do it. There's going to be a lot of debate about how we move from an economy that's importing oil to one that's exporting clean energy technology; how we harness the innovative potential on display here at MIT to create millions of new jobs; and how we will lead the world to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. There are going to be all sorts of debates, both...
...merely from chemical reactions and combustion engines, but also from the tangle of institutions, values, incentives, and social arrangements that give rise to these physical phenomena. For example, Americans drive so much not because driving is an inevitable aspect of human life, but because our particular market system prices oil a certain way, because our government favors highways over mass transit, because we inhabit a culture that views casual car use as morally acceptable, and so forth...
...TIME's story on green heroes [Oct. 5]: You needn't go to Japan to find people using biofuel. My son has been collecting oil from local restaurants and converting it to diesel fuel for his truck for years. The vehicle runs well, the process is relatively simple, and it costs him next to nothing...