Turns out that bio-diesel is really not much better for the environment than fossil fuels, and in some ways, it's worse. One more reason to be annoyed at all those VW beetles with "I run on biodiesel" bumper stickers. Also, I like the term "bait and switchgrass."
Why is it surprising that fuel from crops is really inefficient? Crops take a lot of land to grow. You can't pack them in very tightly. So, if you really want to run your economy off of them, it should surprise no one that it would take a phenomenal amount of farm land to do so. And it should surprise no one that there's a fuck of a lot of work that would have to go into transforming any given plant into a usable biofuel.
Why are wind, solar, geothermal, and even nuclear so hard? The technologies exist. They're just more expensive. Hey, you know what I bet would reduce the cost? Increasing the market for them (which means there's more money to be made, which means more money will go into research, ...).
Has the idea that you might need to suffer in the short-term to benefit in the long term so completely alien to the public discourse that actually dealing with our energy problems is infeasible?
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