Biofuel crops can be a big threat to wildlife, or not, as this article shows-
Biofuel Grasslands Better for Birds. Science Daily.
Author
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
Not only is a grasslands biofuel better for the ecosystems we have lost and trying to restore, it is a much more efficient process in terms of energy in, energy out. Of course, there is no agribusiness lobby for native grasses…except maybe here in Boulder….:*)
“Not only is a grasslands biofuel better for the ecosystems we have lost and trying to restore, it is a much more efficient process in terms of energy in, energy out. Of course, there is no agribusiness lobby for native grasses…except maybe here in Boulder….:*)”
Better for the ecosystem except for the fact that it is still based off of the continuation of a system that is based upon a cancerous growth that is unchecked and unlimited. It does little good to look towards one thing that will possibly save one part of the Earth when the entire biosphere is collapsing around us. The continuation of Western Civilization in general spells nothing but ecocide. Even as we all see the fact that there are mass unexplained die-offs happening, that habitat destruction is constant, that climate change is accelerating to a frightening level, the left continues to cling to the hope that we will be saved by the very technologies that cause these problems in the first place. How much death and destruction does it take before you all open your eyes to seeing that the system itself is the cause of the problem and needs to go. To act as if we can benefit the natural world while living in a system which is completely removed from it and at odds with it is naive as it is dangerous.
We have to learn to walk before we run, Josh. Adaptation will be necessary as we…the world…learn to live without or with minimal fossil fuel usage. I never see efforts to progress from a corn based system that uses more energy that it produces to one that is more efficient, and may possibly lead to a restoration of grassland ecosystems…
Funny. There is no such thing as cellulosic ethanol. The EPA keeps rolling its mandate for it back because nobody can make it profitably. Try to by a gallon of it. Saw an article last year where a corn farmer was planning grow grass instead if it is more profitable to do so.
If they would subsidize it the same way they do corn and ethanol, it would be “profitable’…