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November 22, 2005

Forest Devastation Due To Biofuels?

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From New Scientist:

THE drive for "green energy" in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction
I don't doubt the validity of this claim; surely there are enterprising folks out there chopping down massive amounts of forests in order to create biofuels from the plant matter they replace them with.

The problem I have with the article is how it makes it sound like this is the only way to create such fuels. The issue that is causing these forests to be destroyed isn't that biofuels cause forest devastation; it's that people are quick to chop down forests for money. There are countless methods to get biofuels from plant matter in a sustainably, but if you're greedy or ignorant or just plain exploitative, you probably do think that mowing down forests to plant cash crops is a good idea.

The solution? Massive amounts more education so that people can understand all of the sources out there for biofuels that are sustainable, including logging waste, used cooking oil, etc. Rather than going out and chopping down trees to feed the new energy fad, we should be approaching this carefully and intelligently, unlike the way that oil came into the picture - with a bunch of explosions and a huge cloud of smoke.

Posted by George at November 22, 2005 1:33 PM Category: Resource Depletion

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