Alternative Energy Doesn't Grow On Trees

Don't kill us with the solution. Alternative energy, namely biofuels is, on the surface, wonderful. No oil. Green fuel. Using the land instead of mining it. Right? Wrong.

Agricultural mining is not the eco-friendly practice we'd like to believe when we shop for our food at the farmer's market. They aren't growing crops off a platform in the south seas or sucking them up from a cavern underground.

No, my friends, to make biofuel you have to grow biomass. And even though you should be able to grow plants on all but one continent, it seems the biofuel industry's favorite place to grow our miracle solution to oil dependence is in fragile rain forests. Or, more specifically, in a field of recently cleared fragile rain forest.

I've seen Jane Goodall speak on a few different occasions, and during her last visit to my hometown she commented that part of the reason she succeeded where Dian Fossey did not, was that she included local people and their lands in her conservation strategy. So it is no surprise to me to discover that she is against biofuels as well.

We're cutting down forests now to grow sugarcane and palm oil for biofuels and our forests are being hacked into by so many interests that it makes them more and more important to save now...Biofuel isn't the answer to everything; it depends where it comes from.

I know one place it comes from. Brazil.

See, rainforest.
Yes, now valuable forest can be burned for a few years of farming, until the soil is depleted and more forest has to be burned. But who am I to play doom and gloom? I'm sure Monsanto is working on a special fertilizer to compliment their genetically engineered seeds.

You know where else we get biomass for biofuel? Indonesia. (Hey look, more rainforest!)

Which is funny because Indonesia is a huge producer of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). We use LNG for energy, pulling it up from caverns underground. We also use it for fertilizer. That's right, most fertilizer use nitrates culled from petroleum. Neat. We're just adding another barrier to getting oil into our vehicles.

Which is why when I find stories like this in my local paper, I don't jump up and down with glee. Instead I wonder, what generation am I killing so that I can pretend to be environmentally nice?

~Lila Schow
Because Responsible Citizens Clean Up After Their Government

http://goodusgov.org/