The harmful effects of biofuels

Biofuels: Mandating Harmful Consequences Energy is the common currency of all living things; something all species need. While plants rely directly on the sun for energy, humans rely on an array of sources like wind, fossil-fuel, water, solar, and more recently biofuels. Of these biofuels, which are fuels obtained directly from living plant matter, ethanol and biodiesel are the most commonly used. These two sources are typically used to fuel cars, trucks, aircraft, and small-engine machines. Biofuels have garnered much attention because they are derived from renewable resources like corn and soybeans rather than non-renewable fossil fuels. The main advantage to biofuels has always been that they give off fewer green-house gasses (GHG), particularly carbon,that petroleum-based fuels are notorious for emitting. Analyzing biofuels from an environmental prospective, they seem to be a positive alternative to replacing society’s addiction to fossil-fuels. However, the amount of fuel need to produce these crops and the amount of cropland needed to supply a nation with biofuel is often ignored in the comparison. Besides requiring high input of energy, space, fertilizer, and pesticides, switching our economy to a biofuel reliant one will lead to deforestation—additional emission of GHGs—and higher priced food. For these reason, among others, the production of biofuels is harmful to consumers, producers, and the environment. Past studies have concluded that replacing traditional gasoline with biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, would cause a reduction in the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted into the air. This aspect is especially important to humanity because many climate and ecosystem experts preach that dangerous climate change is bound to happen when our atmosphere is over 350 ppm (parts per million) carbon. We are currently at 397 ppm. Biofuels appear to be better than petroleum-based fuels because the idea was that the additional plants that would be