Quit Mowing The Grass Part II

The more bio-fuel we make the less food we can grow.  We already produce an excess of corn which is fuel intensive to grow.  We aren’t using crop land to grow the switch grass though we could and still come out ahead.  We can drive the cost of growing crops down by harvesting with bio-fuel powered machinery.

• Ethanol puts out more pollution than gasoline.  In some studies this is the case.  However automakers never wanted to work on the problem, because they were one in bed with the oil companies and secondly because there was no demand to do it.
• Ethanol will harm my cars engine.  This is partly true.  Old gaskets and seals won’t withstand long term ethanol use.  Many of those cars and trucks need to be taken off the road anyways which is slowly being done by attrition.  We have the technology to make gaskets and seals which are safe for use with ethanol, some even do better against ethanol than they do gasoline.
• It will cost more to make ethanol burning cars than it does gasoline burners.  False.  This is just one more thing automakers say to keep people from using ethanol.
• The price of gas won’t go down.  Well duh, nothing is going to make the price of gas go below $3.00 a gallon ever again.
• It is better to buy or use diesel machinery than ethanol burners.  In some things it most certainly is and there is nothing stopping us from planting different, highly productive crops to make that too.  The goal isn’t just to produce fuel it is to cut down on how much is wasted by grass mowing.  The fact we can make fuel from alternate plants is just a bonus.
• Refineries cost too much to build for the government.  False.  Huge refineries cost a lot of money, but a cellulosic or bio-diesel production facility doesn’t have to be huge.  You can easily produce small ones to handle local amounts of bio-matter for very little money.  Secondly there is nothing that says it has to be a public processor.  A local processor would encourage others to use local unused lands for the same crop, producing even more fuel.
• Expensive pipeline infrastructure would been to be built.  False.  Sending the final product away from the production facility defeats the purpose of local production and consumption.  Secondly we need new a pipeline infrastructure anyways.  Most of our current system is old and starting to show signs of degradation.

Like my call to stop cutting grass on an individual level I am not saying we should totally eliminate the task.  There are some places that need cutting and some very good reasons to do it in others.  However simply reducing the amount of time we spend doing it will save not only money, but lessen the impact we make on our environment.