RECENT POSTS
- This Flu Kills
August 29, 2009 - Serious Doubts on Healthcare
August 27, 2009 - Ted Kennedy Dies
August 26, 2009 - Two and a Half Men: The Return of the Sitcom
August 24, 2009 - MJ's FBI File
August 24, 2009 - How Youth Make a Difference
August 22, 2009 - Hurricane Katrina Four-Year Anniversary: Have We Done Enough?
August 21, 2009 - Bringing Guns to Obama Town Halls
August 19, 2009
E-mail a friendYOUNG VOICES
Mo' Biofuel, Mo' Problems
Jatropha sounds like a rare tropical disease, or maybe the latest fitness craze, but it is neither. It's a plant whose seeds could supply the world's poorest regions with cheap, renewable energy. An article in yesterday's New York Times reported on the growing popularity of jatropha in Mali, where it promises to provide subsistence farmers with added income, and electricity to remote villages. The oil pressed from jatropha's seeds can power generators, and can also be turned into biodiesel. Unlike corn and sugarcane, two other popular sources of biofuel, jatropha can grow in poor soil, with little water, no pesticides, and minimal fertilizer. Judging by the evidence presented in the Times article, as well as several jatropha-touting organizations on the Web, it seems too good to be true. That may well be the case.
Back in April, the U.N. released a report on jatropha and other biofuels, praising their potential as sources of renewable energy, but also offering a long list of possible negative environmental and economic consequences of turning them into cash crops. For a more concrete example of what not to do, one need look no further than the U.S. Our most popular biofuel, Cornbelt ethanol, much praised as a step towards a foreign oil-free future, requires almost as much energy to make, in the form of oil-based fertilizers, harvesting, and refining, as it as it ultimately produces. And that doesn't take into account the billions of dollars in subsidies our government pays farmers to grow the corn in the first place. Such are the dangers where politics and agriculture meet.
It is clear that efficient plant fuels, like those from jatropha, have much to offer our oil-guzzling world. Whether they will actually help us, however, rather than creating more problems than they solve, remains to be seen.