[Community_garden] Biofuels Myths-Please forward to friends

[Lisa Dufresne]

I don't normally weigh in such issues, but I will here. Background: I'm a 
Chemical Engineer and I work for a company that evaluates and writes 
commercialization assessments for new technology that is developed by small 
businesses via grant funding from the Federal government. These SBIR grants 
(small business innovative research) are varied, intersting, useful, and 
sometimes very very early stage technologies. When I look at biofuels in the 
short term, I agree. I see a nonsustainable venture that will increase feed 
costs, justify even further use of pesticides and non-organic fertilizer, 
and just seems to make no sense.

But then I look longterm. I think about the projects I've worked on that try 
to develop something, and maybe partially succeed, and then some unrelated 
benefit occurs (some other industry benefits from the innovation, the 
technology's first cut is ineffective but the second or third or tenth 
iteration works great). I would like to believe, based on the dozens and 
dozens of technologies that I have personally worked on, that this is only 
the beginning of a long process to evaluate how to develop a sustainable 
source of energy. short term, I don't see that, but I'm an optimist and 
truly believe that the economics will drive bio technology into something 
that can be sustainable, though it may not be the "whole" energy pie, only a 
slice, like solar, wind, etc. It would be great if corn solved the world's 
energy problems, but that's not going to happen (mainly because it's not the 
fuels that cause the problems, it's the users of the fuel..).

Personally, what I think is important about this whole biofuel venture is 
not the early work, but making sure that R&D continues to improve the 
process, find better fuel sources, and then an admission that this is no the 
"be all end all" fix so let's not neuter the landscape and plant corn (or 
whatever). I'd be advocating for more research money to make sure we're not 
stuck with the first version of this attempt.

Again, I don't mean to preach, but just to give you a different perspective.

Lisa Dufresne
Athens, VT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Betsy Johnson" <betsyjohnson at speakeasy.net>
To: "ACGA listserv" <community_garden at list.communitygarden.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:28 AM
Subject: [Community_garden] Biofuels Myths-Please forward to friends


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> <http://www.thedatabank.com/smFriend.asp?enid=YWFjd2M9MzExNDQxOTkwMDc4NzI3MT
> c3NzgmZW1haWw9Y29tZm9vZEBlbGlzdC50dWZ0cy5lZHU=> Forward this newsletter to 
> a
> friend
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>  <http://www.foodfirst.org/images/header.jpg>
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> Biofuels are not clean and green.  Biofuels will result in deforestation.
> Biofuels will not bring rural development.  Biofuels will cause hunger.
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> Today's International Herald Tribune, with more than one million political
> and influential subscribers worldwide, published an opinion piece by Food
> First's executive director, Eric Holt-Gimenez.  Moving full speed ahead 
> with
> biofuels could result in environmental disaster and increased human
> suffering.
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> Please forward this link to the editorial to your friends.
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> http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinion/edholt.php
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> or at the Food first web site
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> http://www.foodfirst.org/inthenews
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