Biofuels: Part of the Solution

That's what the newspaper caption read: Biofuels aren't causing the food crisis - they're part of the solution. Well, if they're derived from non-food sources like dead trees, waste cooking oils, and other types of non-food waste products, ethanol certainly can be an assist, albeit a modest one, to help in alleviating our century's dire need of fossil fuels by our energy-wasteful ways of life.

Most certainly the oil-using world would like to remove itself from its self-destroying dependence on the oil-producing world. When that is pronounced it's clear that the finger of blame is pointing squarely at the OPEC cartel. But then, there are other oil-producing countries, not part of OPEC, and while some of them, like Canada, for example, produce plenty of oil and gas it's never enough to assuage the needs of the international community.

Let alone their own internal needs. Hydro production is great, but the world has a dearth of sufficient water-sourced energy. Nuclear energy has its own problems, not the least of which is the disposal of nuclear waste, a true nightmare scenario guaranteed to haunt us with its disaster potential foraeons. Wind-generated power is inadequate, a hopeful sop. Solar-generated power reliant on sunny climes, but useful.

So really, must we return to dirty old coal and continue carbonizing and particulating our atmosphere beyond breathable redemption, and end up like China, with its severely troubled atmosphere? Oil, the bane of ourtransportative existence. So, are biofuels the alternative to fossil fuels? Hardly; we could never harvest sufficient growing crops to produce enough ethanol to replace fossil fuels.

And until we discover an inedible crop willing to lend itself to ethanol production on a large scale, biofuels will remain a miserable alternative. Environmental enthusiasts who once championed the concept of biofuel production as a replacement response to fossil fuels, echoing a lesser impact on the atmosphere through less carbon emissions are now swallowing their tongues.

Cereal grains cannot be seen as a solution through bypassing the slight inconvenience of world hunger and steadily rising food prices. True, farmers whose produce was never sufficiently appreciated in the past, and who scarcely made a living through their agricultural commitment as a functioning, fundamental livelihood, are now seeing their incomes rise.

Arable land once given over to producing food crops for peoples' consumption are now being dedicated to biofuels-producing grains. Forests are being cleared to make way for larger tracts of farmland. To benefit biofuel production. Subsistence farmers in Africa, Latin America and impoverished Asia can turn to growing crops for fuel production, and see their meagre incomes rise.

As they starve alongside those of their countrymen. Still, the president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association speaks glowingly of the potentials inbiofuels production. Biofuels, he assures the reading public "are the most environmentally viable alternative to gasoline today".

We have it on the best authority.