Personal dilema about biofules?

Question

Anyone else wondering what will happen when these crops (corn, grains etc) become such valuable resources the people who rely on them for staple diets will not be able to afford them...? I know this is happening right now, I am thinking scale it up a few years, decades.

So are we wasting time with plant based fuels right now? Should we be really focused instead on tide/solar/wind as energy sources?

Why cant we just have full electric cars charged by wind or tidal energy?

Answer 1

For some insight into corn as a commodity crop, you should read the Omnivore's Dilemma.  Michael Pollan explores the "corn" conundrum in a lot of detail.

Biofuels from crops is not a sustainable or ecologically sound solution to our problems.  Reducing consumption is a huge part of the equation.  Corn is being pushed because of economic, not environmental reasons.  Better potential biofuel sources are grasses (which don't need cultivation) or even burning garbage.

The problem with corn is that it is an energy hog (takes a lot of fuel & fertilizer) and requires the plowing under of ecosystems (forests, grasslands, etc) that already store a ton of carbon.  A recent report by a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, Dr. Joe Fargione (see the True Cost of Biofuels at http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climat...

shows that growing biofuels (corn type) costs more carbon than it saves.

Answer 2

As long as Americans and the western world continue to consume at the current rate problems like this will exists no matter what kind of energy we are using. America makes up 5% of the world's population as you know, but our consumption of everything from energy to morphine dwarfs the consumption of the rest of the world.

As more nations follow the lead of the US, the problem will be exacerbated. The decision of leaders like Al Gore to focus on global warming [ONLY] (don't get me wrong it is a problem), instead of focusing on conspicuous consumption (of rich people like himself) and over consumption of resources by our nation overall, will only serve to squeeze the balloon so to speak. Until the paradigm of consumption and consumerism is changed the world will continue to have very lopsided standards of living.