April 2, 2011

Soylent Green: Biofuel is manure!

In the 1973 movie Soylent Green, Charleton Heston exists in a future world where the greenhouse effect and overpopulation have contributed to massive food shortages.  The food that is available is created as vegetable-based processed food rations known as Soylent Yellow and Soylent Red. Over the course of the movie, it is slowed revealed to Heston's character that their newest product Soylent Green, is made from the dead.  This leads to the famous Heston line  "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!"   What does that have to do with Biofuel?  Nothing.  And everything.



First off, biofuel is NOT made from dead people.  Although, according to it's definition, it could be.  Biofuels refers to a wide range of fuels that are created from biomass. Biomass is a renewable energy source. It is biological material from living, or recently living organisms. That could be people. In theory bio-diesel could be made from the bodies of the dead. But it isn't and let's assume it never will be. This isn't Soylent Green, or The Matrix. But there is something else to consider.

With the global warming alarmists,  world population facing food shortages due to a bad global growing season, scarcity of resources such as oil (among others), and Obamacare's rationing of health care seems not totally dissimilar to the world of Soylent Green where mass euthanasia is feeding the remaining overpopulated world, there is one thing that seems a little bit like the science fiction work.

Recycling.  In Soylent Green people were being recycled.  With the mass hysteria of environmentalism, everything is being recycled, and ultimately recycling people isn't that far fetched in that paradigm.  However, in a different vein, biofuel is a renewable resource.  It isn't more environmentally friendly but it is renewable.  Conceivably it is endless in supply.  But here's where the whole thing falls apart like a clump of chicken manure - it's a dead end road.  By growing vegetables for ethanol (not biodesiel), much less space is available to grow food for the world's vast and ever-growing population.  

The effect is almost a self-fulfilling Soylent Green prophecy.   Global warming hysteria fuels a clamor for alternative fuels.  Using biological mass as a first step away from dependence on foreign oil, is an easy, and seemingly green solution.  That it causes a food shortage has been well documented.  Inflation necessarily follows that.  A need for cheap food sources is not far off if agriculture is going to increasingly be used to produce food.  I think you can see where that could head.

Don't get me wrong, Soylent Green is a movie and not reality.  I don't believe that for a second.  But I do believe that biofuel is manure.  It is not cost effective, it's not efficient as a source of fuel, and it has unintended  consequences in the food supply.  And for the environmentalists out there, it doesn't really help with emissions.  So what's the point?  If you're looking for an alternative to oil, how about natural gas?  There's lots.

NOTE: I do not work for any natural gas company or a lobbyist.  No one in my family is.  I have not been paid to make any endorsement.  This is simply a supply and demand common sense solution.

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