Earth Day
i thought we were ushering in an age of awareness, an age of answers, an age of change (the positive kind), but turns out i was wrong. looks like the solution is bigger than the problem. who would have thought that BIOFUELS are as detrimental to our environment as spraying your hair with aerosols infused with CFCs. well how can this be you ask? how in the world is thinking "green" destroying our earth. believe me, i thought this was pretty fucked up when i first learned about it.
so here it goes, my earth day special.
many activists, politicians, environmentalists, aka al gore are all pushing for the world to stop using petroleum oil. you know the gist, sources are not easily renewable blah blah. luckily, we found an alternative, the use of ethyl alcohol or ethanol as fuel! the reason why ethanol by default is the best solution is because its all natural, renewable, and its distilled from plant matter. hey you could make your own fuel in your own backyard! WOW.
except... this is what's happening. instead of serving its purpose of preserving our earth, its actually making it a whole lot shittier. this is for the following reasons.
1. did you know that the amount of grains needed to fuel an SUV can feed a person for ONE WHOLE YEAR? (so this brings up the issue of world population and the quality of life. sometimes it comes down to either wanting to save a tree or a life)
2. that the distilleries of ethanol produce CFCs themselves? deforestation in order to set up the distilleries also enhance carbon emission.
anyway, please dont get bored!!! this next part is really important!!!
3. in the US, 1/5 of the produced grains of corn are used for the manufacture of biofuels. what happens is that since there is a shortage on those crops, their prices increase. (woah science and econ!) the farmers of other crops then want a share in all the profit, so they start planting corn crops as well, and in turn their original crops rise in value. now you see a trend, someone is obviously going to try and get in on the moolah. and in this case, its the farmers from brazil. but where are they going to plant their crops? there's no more land, every inch used for cultivation is just enough to support local needs, now theyre catering to a global scale.
lack of land leads to mass deforestation. the amazon is the main target for this movement. you might argue that youre replacing plants with plants, but the new crops youre planting dont quite match up to the trees of a forest in regulating carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
so im not condemning biofuels. they're certainly "greener" in a way. but are they worth it? i guess we have to realize that we havent found the best way to stop global warming, and biofuels are just part of the solution. we should all do our part and try to conserve and use our resources wisely. and perhaps learn how to breathe without exhaling carbon dioxide.
if you wanna learn more about biofuels and global warming, pick up a copy of time magazine april7 issue