The role of biofuels in the saga of global depletion is TINY in comparison to the role of Big Industry as a whole. Coca-Cola has depleted the world's water supplies more than biofuels production. The logging industry has devastated rain forests for years, yet it keeps on occurring. Yet, no one seems to demand that all paper originating from trees in rainforests be monitored. Instead, with biofuels, it is yet again easy to get public opinion to believe it is a driving factor in global deforestation and the cause therefore also for food prices rising.
I raise this point because I am fascinated with the sophistication of the average person's knowledge NOT about biofuels in general, but SPECIFICALLY: the average person knows incredibly detailed CRITIQUES of biofuels. For example, often, in super markets or parking lots, when talking with random people, I hear this "Oh, ethanol? Doesn't it take more energy to produce ethanol than that ethanol actually produces?" Do you realize how sophisticated this question is for a contractor from Jersey? When I say to them "How much energy does it take to produce one unit of energy in petro oil or home heating or natural gas?", they have no clue? They shrug and don't care that the fact is for every ONE unit of energy that goes into producing petro-oil, barely ONE unit of energy is produced. That's a one-to-one ratio; conversely, our biodiesel produced from waste cooking oil is a ratio of one-to-five, meaning for every one unit that goes into production, five units of energy are produced in the form of biodiesel.
My point is: people now say 'biofuels are making corn more expensive, making food more expensive, destroying rainforest' but they have no clue how small a role the biofuels industry is playing in the global destruction that has already resulted from and continues to result from corporate raiding globally, which makes their lifestyles possible in the first place.
Why is it so easy for such negativity to attach itself in the public opinion leading to such sophisticated critique by the masses?
If the UN wants to advocate that crops used for biofuels should be regulated to ensure ethical production standards, then the UN should make such a mandate for virtually every manufacturing industry. How about coming out against the numerous companies that Bloomberg Magazine exposed for using pig ore and steel produced in Brazil on slave plantations in the middle of the Amazon? There are doubtlessly countless other industries that dwarf the biofuels industry in size of their role in global depletion yet they occur with little public scrutiny, and certainly little to no condemnation from such high pulpits as the UN.
Corn is used for vastly more than simply the production of ethanol: it is a foodstuff in thousands of products and other uses, and its demand therefore has skyrocketed overall. High oil prices have also pushed up ancillary costs in the market place leading to pressure on the food supply. Yes, biofuels produced from crop-based feedstocks have the chance of having some downside consequences but I would rather see the UN clean up other industries and make available those lands for the production of biofuels.
It is true that down the road, second generation fuels will come online (my company is working on two: biodiesel from algae and ethanol from waste products) and the value of crop-based fuels will virtually vanish given the feedstock costs. But for now, I would prefer that the lens be broadened to look at those industries MOST responsible for deforestation and global water shortages, and I believe biofuels will be very far down on that list!
-Alok Appadurai
| By Roger Harrabin Environment Analyst, BBC News, Valencia |
The biofuels bonanza will crash unless producers can guarantee their crops have been produced responsibly, the UN's environment agency chief has said. 
Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed.
Biofuel makers also had to show their products did not produce more CO2 than they negated, he told BBC News.
Critics say biofuels will lead to food shortages and destroy rainforests.
They point to the destruction of Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly.
The swamps are one the richest stores of carbon on the planet and they are being burned to produce palm oil.
Mr Steiner implied that because of Indonesia's inability to police its land use, biofuels from palm oil grown by the nation might never be deemed to be sustainable.
But he said some biofuels could be considered sustainable. He highlighted ethanol production in Brazil, and a dry land crop called jatropha, which is resistant to pests and droughts.
Mr Steiner urged investors not to turn their backs on developing second or third generation fuels that would use non-food crops and burnable waste.
He feared that beneficial biofuels might be lost as part of a consumer backlash.
Mr Steiner made his comments in response to criticism from a group of independent scientists who said they had written to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) complaining that the climate body's comments on biofuels have been naive.
The independent scientists pointed to two phrases in reports by the IPPC, of which Unep is a co-sponsor, which the scientists said could not be substantiated.
One stated that biofuels were an effective solution in at least a number of countries, while the other suggested that biofuels in the transport sector would generally have positive social and environmental benefits.
False economy
One of the scientists, Tad Patzek from University of California Berkeley, US, said: "In the long-run, the planet cannot afford to produce biofuels because we're going to run out of the land and water and environmental resources.
"In addition, because of the land use changes, drying up peat-swamps, burning tropical forest, these biofuels involve up-front enormous emissions of greenhouse gases that will never be recouped by their later use," he told BBC News.
Professor Patzek also doubted Mr Steiner's confidence in Brazilian ethanol. "The [IPCC] description of Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol production as 'highly advanced' and 'a model' is somewhat of an exaggeration.
"It's neither good nor a model," he said.
Brazilian producers are adamant that their bio-crops are not grown on rainforest land - but the environmental group Friends of the Earth Brazil claim that peasant farmers - dispossessed by biofuel conglomerates - are moving to the Amazon to seek new land.
Mr Steiner said Brazil had enough land to ensure that biofuel cropping could be sustainable.
The group of scientists said their letter to the head of the IPCC, Professor Pachauri, had not been answered.
BBC News has not been able to obtain a comment from Professor Pachauri, though this may be hardly surprising given that the final summit on the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (A4R) is currently underway in Valencia, Spain.
Mr Steiner said Unep had set up a high-level task force to study the life-cycle implications of all biofuels. The group is expected to publish its findings next year.
By then much of the Indonesian peat swamps - one of the most valuable stores of carbon in the world - will have been torched.
The only way of stopping may not be through the UN or the Indonesian government, but through one or more private philanthropist with a burning desire to own an Indonesian swamp.
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