Biofuels: A Hoax
I’m guilty of thinking alternative fuels as a panacea until I realized that many of them require disproportionately more energy to produce. In the case of biofuel it not only consumes more energy but frighteningly jeopardizes food abundance, ending in price gouging. Plus the increased use of fertilizers draining off into the Gulf creating health hazards and depleting fish life.
By ignoring soil preservation farmers are wrecking the planet by releasing heretofore trapped carbon dioxide. Globally, wholesale deforestation of the Amazon Basin foreshadows disaster.
For this country the result has been a mere 1% savings in oil consumption—hardly a Marshall Plan.
Far more effective is for the government and consumers to insist on stringent CAFE regulation, reducing the mindset of “bigger and better”; green building codes and incentives to revamp existing buildings into new green giants, along with environmental appliances. In the meantime, environmentally sensitive drilling in ANWR and other locations should be allowed; coal plants must be mandated to trap its toxins back into the earth. At the same time the government should lift the moratorium on Nuclear energy and increase incentives to build state of the arts plants and worry about what to do with waste later—perhaps eventually shuttled to the moon. Solar generated centrally would be far better and cheaper than costly solar panels on roofing, subject to storm damage. Federally preserved lands should be used for wind power grid plants. Further we should look into upgrading existing dams and think about new dam projects.
Wacky biofuels should be terminated.