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The international energy agency estimates that within the next twenty-three years, the world could produce 147 million tons of biofuels. Such a volume will produce a lot of carbon, nitrous oxide, erosion and more than 2 billion tons of used water. As surprising as this may seem, this will just compensate for the annual increase of global demand for oil, currently estimated at 136 million tons a year. Is it worth the enormous investment?
For the big cereal companies, certainly. Whether they are called ADM, Cargill or Bunge, they are the pillars of agro business.
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Unfortunately, the transition towards biofuels suffer from a congenital flaw. They enter into competition with food for land, for water and for resources. Developed to the extreme, they will be used to produce… biofuels. … "Renewable" actually does not mean "unlimited". Even if the cultures can be replanted, the land, the water and the nutriments remain limited.
Actually, the attraction of these biofuels resides in the fact that they might prolong the oil-based economy. … The higher the price of oil, the more the price of ethanol can increase and still remain competitive. In fact, that is the very contradiction for the second generation biofuel: as the cost of biofuel goes up, biofuels of the first generation become more profitable. … The world energy crisis is potentially a gold mine of 80,000 to 100,000 billion dollars for the food and oil corporations. It's not surprising that we are not encouraged to scale back on our habits of "over consumption".
There is nothing inevitable in the transition towards biofuel. Numerous local solutions of replacement have been conducted successfully in certain regions, proving to be efficient on an energy level and still remaining centered on the needs of the inhabitants. These replacements have proved operational for producing food and energy without having a bad effect on the environment or on the means of existence.
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It would be unacceptable for the countries in the North to move the burden of their over consumption to the South of the planet, simply because intertropical countries get more sun, more rain and have more arable lands.
Cross posted from Axis of Logic
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