This is worth a read and reflect some of the concerns raised on this forum by Stew and others that growable fuels, rather than solving a problem, just create others.
I also saw a news story on our local news - After finally getting some good rains our some of our farmers are unable to take advantage of the rain due to record fertiliser prices, caused in part by the ethanol/biodiesel boom.
That's an interesting article, Nev; we heard something about the Mexican tortilla protests here a couple of weeks ago.
But I take issue with the conclusions - he still goes down the same old path of finding ways to use our cars in the same way - "thousands of wind farms" <shudder>; and the idea that improving the efficiency of vehicles by 20% won't simply mean we use more vehicles more often, with no net reduction in consumption.
All the signs are that vehicle use continues to rise, along with fuel consumption. The real issue that we will someday have to face, is that we've got to find ways to reduce vehicle use, not just prop up our present habits. Clearly we are going to have to be lead, coerced and cajoled into that, and I don't envy any government leader that finally takes it on.
Using less fossil fuel is not the problem, it is obviously a good thing. The problem is excess consumption.
Taking land that would be used to grow food and turn it into land used to provide energy for a country that already consumes far more than it's fair share, with the result that the poorest go hungry. That is the problem.
It's conundrum alright. My OH and I had been keen on the idea of biodiesel until we ahd realised that buying it commercially will have the impacts mentioned above.
However reusing used oil to make biodiesel is still an excellent thing to do so I'm now more keen on pursuing that option. I know our local pub would be very happy for us to take it off their hands and save them the disposal charges.
It begins to give the (diesel) land-rover a purpose in life Not so sure what to do about my (efficient) little petrol Yaris though .
The way I see it, is that consumption (as in 'consumerism') is a very broad equation, of which fuel consumption is one of the main factors. Increasing our ability to consume fuel by developing bio fuels, or wind generation, will also mean increasing still further our use of cars, which will mean building ever more roads, and lead to ever increasing traffic problems. It will in turn will mean people will commute further to work, rural house prices will exclude local people as city workers move in or buy them as second houses, urban streets will increasingly become rat-runs, and no-go areas for pedestrians, out-of -town shopping developments will continue to run rough-shod over local planning laws.
Fuel, whether fossil fuel, biofuel, wind power, wave power, or whatever, is the fuel of consumerism. Without fuel, there can be no industry, no distribution, and no means for us to plug in our newly bought consumerist product. Fuel drives consumerism, and consumerism drives our economy. It not only means more cars and more roads, it also means third world sweatshops, and landfill problems; it means intensive farming and mad cow disease; it means building on flood plains and water shortages; it means a growing population and bankrupt pension funds; it means 1,000 TV channels supported by advertising and nothing else worth watching; it means a growing divide between rich and poor; it means substituting humanist values with entertainment...
Personally, I think the more we consume in this way, the worse off we are becoming; having more stuff is not, after all, the same as having a higher standard of living.
The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to believe that bio-fuels, and windfarms, et al, are just ways of enabling us to continue along the same consumerist path. The thing is, consumerism depends upon continually increasing consumption, which is another way of saying continually increasing our exploitation of the planet. Biofuel doesn't actually address the core of the problem.
I also think that some of this might be addressed if we were to take individual responsibility for our energy production - micro generation, solar hot water, that sort of thing. We would then be far more aware of what it took to power our economy, and less inclined to be wasteful. We would have to reapraise our values. And to an extent it would mitigate the ability of the rich to simply pay more to have more. Carrying that idea forward, we would also realise just how much land is needed to grow enough biofuel to use our cars. But this would require a major shift in our thinking - what we expect from an economy, how we exist in communities, the values we incorporate within our lives.
I am sorry i cant agree completely with your thinking here.
The onus is certainly not on one country to support several others.
Just because a country is lucky to have a surplus of natural resources doesnt mean they should be forced to support other populations.
Nobody has ever turned around to the middle east countries and said because you are lucky to have loads of oil we think you should give it away or sell it cheaply so we can keep warm because we havent any..........imagine if you did!!!!
paddy wrote:The onus is certainly not on one country to support several others.
I'll avoid getting into moral issues but there are good environmental reasons why biofuels is a dead end.
It's not just the US grain surplus that is being eaten up by biodiesel. Rainforest in indonesia is being burned down and replaced by Palm oil plantations. In south america the rain forest continues to be depleted to grow grain. Americas surplus isn't sustainable, the soils fertility is only being mantained by high inputs of artificial fertilizers and already show signs of collapse in some areas.
There are potential biofuels on the horizon which will allow for a more limited supply of transportation fuel but they aren't here yet.
The main trouble is what is happening will just be a means of the big oil companies to get a hold of an aulternative fuel supply and rip every one off like they do now.
Why are we not seeing water used as fuel. It can be done. It has the greatest power of any fuel. They even drive those shuttle thingies into space with it so where is the research looking for ways for us to drive aour cars and trucks on it.
paddy wrote:My point.............The alleged worlds biggest polluter takes a stance for whatever reason to use LESS fossil fuel by making a sustainable product.
They won't use much less fossil fuel, they will just use it in different places as inputs to agribusiness.
paddy wrote:Imagine if you sat down and thought of all the bad what if's might happen before you did anything? You have to admit you wouldnt go out the front door.
I do this every time we kick of a project or activity at work, we still get things done, failure to carry out risk activities and failure mode studies would depending on the nature of the project be irresponsible or even illegal. While we can never think through all of the unintended consequences of our actions we should at least try and address those that are obvious and are pointed out before we go down a route.
What we are talking about in the states is tinkering with the current system, adding a percentage of ethanol to the tanks of gas guzzlers isn't going to fix the problem. It may, if you ignore the embodied energy in the ethanol, make a paper contribution to reducing CO2 emissions. It doesn't face up to the harder reality that sometime between last year and some point in the next twenty five years conventional oil will peak.
My point of view comes from simple facts, we are living on finite planet with finite resources, and a finitie ability to deal with polution yet our economic system is based on continued growth.
We have to fix the human part of that equation, the planet isn't going to get any bigger. Tinkering with the current system doesn't work on a global scale it only moves problems around. Our proud claim in the UK is we have reduced our emissions. This has largely been accomplished by exporting manufacturing. We then earn our wages in low emissions service sector jobs and use the wages to import products made abroad. The emissions are our responsibility, but we don't count them in our figures.
All of the solutions that business will come up with will most likely be based on more when IMHO we really need less. Unfortunately less is a hard message to sell. Less cars, less travel, less cheap electronic goods and toys.
I seem to be suffering from a case of the Monbiots, must go off for a wee lie down now.
This is worth a read and reflect some of the concerns raised on this forum by Stew and others that growable fuels, rather than solving a problem, just create others.
I also saw a news story on our local news - After finally getting some good rains our some of our farmers are unable to take advantage of the rain due to record fertiliser prices, caused in part by the ethanol/biodiesel boom.
*Sigh*
Nev
I've mentioned this a few times to various people and on various forums over the past year, generally to disbelief.
In the past three years, we've seen barley prices go from £48-50 a tonne to £140 a tonne driven by four things: world grain reserves at 20-year lows, rising cost of inputs (particularly oil, which then flows through everything), poor crop yield due to changing weather patterns, and increasing demand for cereal crops (or the land on which they are grown) for use as biofuels.
The problem for us is that people are unwilling or unable to pay more for their pork and eggs (we've had a couple of small price rises but not enough), so we get pinched. It's even worse for the farmers who supply the supermarkets as they're being forced to push their prices down while the cost of their inputs rise.
It's not a sustainable situation - you can't have low retail prices for food, high profits for the supermarkets, a shortage of supply combined with rising input costs, and ever diminishing returns for the farmers (who get fewer every year).
Something will have to give at some point and it's probably going to be very, very messy - even leaving out the critical environmental situation. Factor that in, and...
I hadn't thought much about it before, but the book "My year of meat" says somehting like 70% of US grain goes to feeding cows... I always thought people ate most of it - how foolish of me! The US system of raising animals is so incredibly different to the NZ way!
I agree that micro-power systems are the way to go, which would have the effect of examining and reducing each person's energy consumption. We have just been told here, our power prices are going up by some huge amount - so glad we will be off the grid in 6 months!
Yeah but how do I make myself a micro power station and run it without having to buy in any fuel.
Actually, the greatest loss of energy in the entire world must be the loss in transmission lines. If every household had their own power source only a fraction of the fuel would be needed.
I was meaning a personal power supply - like solar/wind/micro-hydro, needing no fuel.
Maybe if we each grew our own plants to supply our own bio fuel? I don't know at all, I intend going solar/wind, so haven't really looked into the growing side of it.
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