An opinio essay

Trevor Gustafson
Physics 114
An Opinion Essay on Biodiesels


It seams like we hear a whole lot of opinions about global warming everywhere we go. It’s on the covers of magazines, brought up in the classroom, and plastered on the bumpers of half the cars on campus. But where do we seam to hear the debate over global climate change the most? It’s in the political realm. It’s fought over in congress, brought up in most presidential debates, and the main focus of an entire political party (the green party). But how many real solutions do we hear coming from Washington D.C.? Pretty close to zero. In D.C., global warming is used as a political tool to stir the hearts of voters and to get elected. The theme coming from our capital seams to be we need everyone to clean up our environment just so long as that everyone doesn’t include me. There are many people who think that so long as everyone believes that global warming is true, all our problems will be solved. That is just not true. While I believe that natural weather patterns are the main cause of global climate change, I believe that if humans are responsible for part of the problem, the only way to fix the problem is to look at real solution such as alternative energy sources like ethanol, biodiesel, and hybrid vehicles. While some options may not be helpful, and downright harmful, critically examining the options is the only way to find an answer. One such alternative energy source is Biofuels. But on closer examination, are these fuels actually beneficial to our society, or are they causing more harm then they are good?
Without doubt, food prices have been going up. Of course not all of this may have to do with food being diverted to making ethanol and biodiesels. Factors such as a growing population and rising transportation costs may also be responsible for the rise in the cost of food. However, it is safe to say, that to at least some extent food prices have been affected by the rise in the demand for biodiesels. Even though food is necessary to all humans, in the United States food is considered a secondary item. When food prices rise we simply cut back on our consumption of luxury goods. But it developing countries, food is considered much more central in a family’s inventory of things to buy. According to the United Nations Human Development Program’s Human Development Report (2007/2008), about 1 Million people in the world live on $1 or less per year (page 240).When the price of corn rises, these people can’t simply cut back on consuming other items; their only option is to consume less food.
Would we ever be able to grow enough food such as corn, sugar cane and soybeans to supply all the biodiesel fuel needs in our country? To produce enough corn to power even half of our energy needs would take at least 157% of the existing land already designated to farming in this country. But look at how far we’ve come since pre-industrial-revolution times. Before the Industrial revolution, most people worked on the farm. Today, machinery has taken over the farming industry requiring fewer and fewer people to man a farm. Advances in technology have allowed not only fewer people to work on a farm, but also have allowed us to farm land that was formerly un-useful for farming purposes. To say that we would never be able to grow enough food to supply all of our food needs as well as power our energy wants is, not only a lie but also a slap in the face of the ingenuity of man. But the process of gaining the technology required to grow more crops could take many years. In the meantime many people might starve. Is the benefit to our environment worth the lives of thousands, possibly millions of people?
Estimates originally published in the Conservation Biology and later republished in the Seattle P.I. have shown that the process of growing and processing corn into biodiesel actually omits about as much greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as diesel, which is not significantly lower than the emissions put out by Gasoline (pp.). Not only does the process of turning corn into biodiesel, at least for the time being, reduce the amount of food available for human consumption, it also has its own environmental damaging effects. Our current sources of biodiesel such as soybeans, sugar cane, and corn should all be scrapped. They’re not worth the price on our society that they’re causing. However there are other possibilities for biodiesel substances such as algae, wood residue and switch grass, that would not only not omit Greenhouse gasses during there processing stages, but also soak up some of those harmfull gasses. However the technology required to turn these substances into biodiesel and ethanol has not yet been discovered and we have no idea whether or not we will ever be able to find a way to convert these plants into useable fuel sources. If people want to incest in alternative fuels, they should stop using corn and other food sources and start looking into these alternative plants.
So while Washington D.C. is embroiled in its seemingly never ending and certainly nothing accomplishing debate over the environment, it’s up to us to support projects that will actually allow us to care for our environment. It’s time that politicians and the public stopped jumping on the latest hippy, political, save-the-environment alternative fuel, and started caring about the big picture. People should realize that just because our current sources of energy are hurting both our environment and our pocket books, doesn’t mean that we should all switch to using an energy source that is actually worse than the one we started with. It is not through rash decisions that we can solve our energy crisis, but rather through the ingenuity that God has given man. Only through real solutions can problems be solved.




















Bibliography
United nations development program. (2007/2008). Human development report. Retrieved 9/28/08. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr_20072008_en_complete.pdf

Groom, Martha. Gray, Elizabeth. Townsend, Patricia. (2008). Conservation Biology. How Green Are Biofuels?, pp.