The world is finally waking up to the nonsense which is bio fuels. At last people are seeing that big business are only after vast profits from biofuels. Bio fuels, when they were first mooted ten or twenty years ago, where going to be a way to use up waste materials from the likes of plywood, paper manufacture and furniture makers who have a great deal of waste wood in pulp and sawdust form. This waste would be pelleted for use in furnaces to heat factories and communities instead of being dumped in landfill sites. Later it was also thought that this waste could be distilled and use as bio diesel. A very laudable purpose for a waste material, but then business saw the potential to con the masses into thinking this is a green dream and is going to help save the planet. There are many things wrong with this premise.
1. Bio Fuels are combusted and produce as much CO2 as coal and gas do.
2. There is insufficient raw material coming from manufacture to make it a viable commercial endeavour , it's fine as a local answer to a local problem.
3. To make it commercially viable arable land would have to be removed from food production to grow bio mass crops causing so many other problems about how do you feed people if you no longer grow crops or rear animals, the main answer to this is you can now charge higher prices for foodstuffs.
4. The government without a second thought about bio fuels gave these businesses tax breaks so they could produce these fuels.While generaly the government can't see beyond taxing everything in sight as an answer to everything so they are particularly useless at trying to save the planet.
It very often breaks my heart that people are not trying to solve the problems of the planet but are hell bent on exploiting it for profit.
