The idea that ethanol is a clean energy fuel is now becoming another environmental myths or another factor of Global Warming. Hyped as an Eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it? The Amazon was the chic Eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been over shadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forests happen also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation.
This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian Agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasing alarming rate. Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oils costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way of politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming.
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol-ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter-in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another five-hold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuels mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in the biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, Ge and BP, FORD and Shell.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even the cellulostic ethanol made from swichgrass, which as been promoted by Eco-activists and Eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil derived gasoline. Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry.
The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable. Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusiness. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amount of carbon.
Back by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damaged created by biofuels will be most direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it's subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon.
It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets. Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions from all other sources. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources-cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows-it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expenses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations-and it's only getting started.
The question is: Why is the Amazon on Fire? THIS DESTRUCTIVE BIOFUEL DYNAMIC IS on vivid display in Brazil, where a Rhode Island-size chunk of the Amazon was deforested in the second half of 2007 and even more was degraded by fire. Some scientists believe fire are now altering the local micro-climate and could eventually reduce the Amazon to a savanna or even a desert. That the destruction is taken place in Brazil is sadly ironic given that the nation is also an exemplar of the allure of biofuels. Sugar growers in Brazil have a green story to tell than do any other biofuels producers. They provide 45% of Brazil's fuel(all cars in the country are able to run on ethanol) on only 1% of its arable land. They've produced fertilizer use while increasing yields, and they convert leftover biomass into electricity.
Several of the most widely cited experts on the environmental benefits of biofuels are warning about the environmental costs now that they've recognized the deforestation effect. The experts haven't given up on biofuels; they are calling for better biofuels that won't trigger massive carbon releases by displacing wild land.
In conclusion, advocates are always careful to point out that biofuels are only part of the solution to Global warming, that the world also needs more energy-efficient light bulbs and homes and factories and lifestyles. And the world does not need all those things. But the world is still going to be fighting an uphill battle until it realizes that right now, biofuels aren't part part of the solution at all. They're part of the problem.
Source:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
No comments:
Post a Comment