Once again, I am right We are trying to save the world and people starve because of it. I am referring of course to bio-fuel. The great white hope that is to save us from evil fossil fuels.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Bio-fuel as a concept. I think alternate fuels sources are a good idea. But bio-fuel is turning out to be a Jurassic Park.
For those that actually read Jurassic Park, a main theme is that of man throwing themselves fully into an idea without thinking of the ramifications. In that book it was about screwing with nature in terms of dinosaurs. When it comes to bio-fuel we are talking about the fact that our capacity to grow vegetation is limited.
See, we jumped on the bio-fuel bandwagon and never wondered where new food would come from, since we were taking a bunch of farmland and no longer making food with it. Food that people used to eat. So, we are letting more people starve around the world, so we can drive cars. That’s pretty awesome isn’t it?
What it comes down to though it our tendency to look for a single big solution. We love smoking guns. Because one solution is easy. So, gas prices are high? Wanna wean off of foreign oil? Bio-fuel. No talk of increasing mass transit, building our rail infrastructure, decreasing population growth, and stop our need to sprawl instead of centralize.
So, we will slowly use more bio-fuels, and the price of food will rise beyond the capacity for many poor countries to afford it. We can keep driving our cars while millions starve. Actually this may be a good plan. Since I believe overpopulation is our actual culprit in many global issues, letting tons of people die will in fact elevate many issues. And then we can use the land they used to live on to grow more fuel!
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6 comments:
I truly wish we had a viable mass transit system in town. You have to make it reasonably convenient for people, or it just won't work. Since I work downtown and my daughter goes to preschool downtown, I should be able to hop on a bus, drop her off and walk to work — especially since my son can walk to school. But there isn't a bus stop anywhere near my community, which is growing rapidly. And even if there was one, StarMetro would likely have bizarre routes and schedules that didn't make any sense. I'd be happy not to spend the money on gas.
Visit this link to hear a quick podcast on the link between bio-fules and the cost of food. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89850141
I agree that we shouldn't use all the corn and farmland to make gas, but you're argument assumes that we actually feed the world. I believe we import way more food than we export. Think about farm subsidies where farmers are paid to trash crops so it won't lower prices when there's too good of a crop.
More likely what would happen is that countries around the world would produce ethanol to make more money exporting to the US and China, etc, and not feed their own people.
Oh, I am not saying it is all our fault directly. But if we have less corn because of BF, so we import more, then the cost of that food goes up in other countries. Also, we then use a crap ton of FOSSIL FUELS to import that food here.
We can't keep treating the world like little separate places. Everything that we do impacts other people and vice versa.
This isn't a comment about bio-fuels, because for once I almost agree with you. Rather, it's a comment to see how your first day on the new job went. I've been thinking about you all day and saying a prayer or two that your day would go well and that you'd feel confident and comfortable. Let me know how it went.
LL
There is a documentary called "Who killed the Electric Car?"
You should rent it.
Basically GM had a working, viable electic car that it gave to a couple hundred people to test. The customers loved it (Mel Gibson had one) and they didn't want to give them up. GM took them all back and scrapped the entire line. Saying there was no demand. Literally turned them into powder and recycled the materials.
Check out the documentary.
There's no way to say this without putting on a tin-foil hat, but there are reasons the big three automotive companies built nothing but gas gussling oil machines for the last fifteen to twenty years.
Now we're suddenly, as if no one expected this, in a gas crisis.
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