In these Times: Biofuels: Promise or Peril? -- by David Moberg

Ethanol Plant
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Biofuels: Promise or Peril? -- by David Moberg

Biofuels: Promise or Peril? -- by David Moberg

When Matt Hawkinson started growing corn in the rich farmland of western Illinois nearly a decade ago, he sold the grain for $2 a bushel, 50 cents less than the cost him to produce it. Recently, buyers have been paying him $4.35 a bushel. It’s a welcome profit—even if it raises the cost of the hogs he feeds—and eliminates his need for government subsides.

Biofuels—energy sources produced from dedicated crops and agricultural waste—have suddenly won wide support. The biofuel craze has been fueled by high oil prices, Mideast political turmoil, global warming fears, concern about low agricultural prices and high government subsidies, and the prospect of making money on the next big thing. Biofuels seem to promise a quick fix for worries about oil prices and supplies without the need for major technological changes. Is oil for the auto-industrial complex too expensive or fraught with problems? Just fill ‘er up with biofuels.

But skeptics—on both the left and the right, including many environmentalists—argue that biofuels can’t solve the world’s energy problems. What’s more, they argue, the biofuel solution threatens both the environment and the world’s poor. In Mexico, the doubling of global ethanol production and quadrupling of biodiesel production in the past five years has led to protests over high prices for corn tortillas. And in Southeast Asia and Latin America it has raised concerns that rainforests are being cleared to cultivate crops for fuel.