article on biofuels

here's an article containing some really entertaining twists on the debate about biofuels:



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19friedman.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage





if the link doesn't work, it's called "the U.S.S. Prius" by Thomas L. Friedman, NYTimes Dec 18 2010.


on that note it needs to be said that the discussion on "biofuels versus food production" is blown largely out of proportion and best described with the german word "totschlagargument" ("beat-to-death-argument", meaning a statement whith such heavy moral connotations that it serves to immediatly end the debate:

so if you're in favor of biofuels, you're in favor of starving children (just as you're in favor of rapists if you oppose mass dna samples, etc). This was only topped by a newspaper promising "diesel made out of cats" on the front page next to a picture of a very cute kitten, which lead to a rather boring article in the middle explaining how pretty much any corps or cadaver or what have you can be decomposed and biofueled in some way.

now there is still a massive potential for growing sustainable biofuels on unused agricultural land in the very middle of europe (and many other parts of the world), often in sequence with food production where the fuel crop prepares the soil for the food crop in the following year.

apart from that, there is a lot of unused biomass in all agriculture, which could be turned into fuel. and the algae...