> Woody biomass energy plantations compete for land with food crops, and have
> a long investment recovery period
Personally I think that this is a major argument in favour of first
generation biofuels. Currently we produce substantially more food than
we actually need, due to large meat consumption, food overconsumption
and indeed (though so far still to a much lesser extent) biofuels. I
see two huge positives about that, that way we've got plenty spare in
case of problems, and we encourage learning in agriculture reducing
long term costs.
These two positives apply much less in the case of non food energy
crops. If there's a megadrought next year, we can reduce corn
consumption by cattle or by ethanol plants virtually overnight,
clearing a forest to plant food crops again is a little more time
consuming.
And it's not just fuel cells or PV that can benefit from learning
effects, agriculture can too, and forcing investment into agriculture
and prices for farm produce to levels where just enough is produced in
the average year, and too little, when there's a major problem,
doesn't seem to me the best way to insure food security.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
