Vanishing cropland and diminishing water supplies are hampering China’s ability to feed itself, and the increasing use of farmland in the United States to produce biofuels like ethanol is pushing China to seek more of its agricultural staples from South America, where land is still cheap and plentiful.What?! Screw the biofuels. This sounds like a natural pairing.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
China’s Harvest - New York Times
America wants cheap, low quality electronics. China wants meat and soy beans.
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3 comments:
That link conveniently left out the rest of the story:
"I think there's an issue between the tailpipe and the whole cycle," he said. "The whole cycle is better than the tailpipe."
According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, all that carbon has to come from somewhere. The two choices are from deep beneath the ground where it's been sequestered in petroleum hydrocarbons for millions of years or from plant matter where it was taken out of the air and converted to plant hydrocarbons by combining water and carbon dioxide in photosynthesis a few months ago. Therefore, the net increase in carbon according to the laws of physics is zero.
Now, the effect of releasing of carbon which has been in subterranean storage for eons the atmosphere is still a subject of debate, but the simple cycling of the same carbon that was in the air last spring is not.
When Minnesota farmers were pressing for more ethanol production back in the 1980's I distinctly remember nobody talking about lower emissions. Lots of people talking about supporting American farmers and lessening our dependence on foreign oil, but nothing about emissions.
That's because the real issue is that they want subsidies. Emissions are the hot topic right now so they've hitched their wagon to that pony too.
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