Friday, September 28, 2007

Beware the quick fix: Biofuels are NOT the answer

According to Nobel Prize winning chemist, Paul Crutzen, trying to find salvation from global climate change by converting precious aglands from food crops to biofuels will only exacerbate the problem. He says that the crops that are now being plants for biofuels--primarily soy and corn--require so much fertilizer that growing them actually produces MORE green house gases than what is combusted as fuel for transportation. He does say that if less nitrogen-demanding crops were used, biofuels might help reduce GHGs and our dependence on fossil fuels. You can read about it here.


Our current rush to find a 'quick fix' is turning out to be disastrous in many ways, including cutting down rainforests to plant soy crops in Brazil and converting aglands from food to biofuel crops in the US.

1 comment:

kaliko said...

Agreed, definitely not the answer... but still feeling good about running a car on biodiesel made from recycled oil rather than the currently available alternatives here.

The current Nat Geo issue is on biofuels (cover story), so that may be another good one to review. (I haven't read it yet.) Thanks Marty!