A new take on biofuels

Background: Switching to Biofuels Could Cost Lots of Green, on Washington Post online—you may need to register, but it’s free and worth it.

This article really got my hackles up, because although I believe that biofuels should be explored as an alternative to fossil fuels, this approach is beyond irresponsible in so many ways—not only in how many dollars the federal government will have to cough up to implement its plan.

So, what’s wrong with it?

• Subsidies: The federal costs of paying off growers in the form of subsidies is already a problem for other crops. For example, the American public pays less than “real” costs for conventional milk because conventional dairies get kickbacks from the government. My mother’s cousin who lives in New Brunswick, Canada, used to say that when he crossed the border into Maine, he had three things on his shopping list: gas, cigarettes, and milk. (Thankfully, he has given up his nasty smoking habit, so his list is shorter now.) The subsidies also hurt organic producers, who don’t receive such subsidies, because the price differential between their products and the conventional ones is artificially high.


• Mass plantings: When the federal government subsidizes a crop or a new potentially lucrative market is created, farmers—who have a hard enough time making ends meet as it is—are encouraged to plant massive single-crop farms of the new crop. Mass plantings reduce the diversity of not only plants on the farm but also the flora and fauna that live in the same ecosystem.


• GMO seed: You can be sure that where there are massive single-crop plantings, there are genetically modified (GMO) seeds. Why? Well, the marketing hype is that they’re less risky—hardier, often with built-in pesticide protection. And they simply cannot be contained; it has already be proven that GMO crops can, through the ancient forces of nature, intermingle with non-GMO crops far and wide (not to mention possible effects on insects and animals). And I don’t want no GMOs in my food—they’re bad news!


• Pesticide use: Farmers that don’t use GMO seeds with built-in pesticides surely are going to apply the pesticides to their crops to increase the survivability (and hence the profit) of the crop. Unfortunately, applications of the common broad-spectrum pesticides kill off the good insects (like bees and butterflies) as well as the bad ones (aphids, chewing beetles, and borers). What’s more, pesticides can drift from conventional crops to organic ones, and their negative effects on non-insect populations (from livestock to humans) have been documented.


• Sustainability: Increasing interest in a new crop decreases sustainability in many ways. It is not difficult to imagine a future surplus in corn-for-ethanol crops. In contrast, a program to recover and repurposed used cooking oil (as championed by many biodiesel users, who drive so-called frymobiles because the exhaust smells like a Fry-o-lator) would not only help restaurants (which are obliged to dispose of the stuff in some way) but also create a market for a product that otherwise would be added to an ever-growing surplus of trash.


• Energy use: Offering a replacement fuel doesn’t address the main issue: Americans consume many times more than their fair share of energy on this planet, and substituting one fuel for another doesn’t make the problem go away.

Don’t get me wrong; I think that biofuels can be a great alternative fuel and an important part of a sustainable energy plan! I’ve even seriously looked into the requirements for using used vegetable oil as fuel and converting a car to biodiesel. I just think that using primary materials is unwise, unhealthy, wasteful, and irresponsible when biodiesel could be a secondary product recycled from erstwhile waste.