Transcript
A tweet by some news company saying “Your bowl of rice is hurting the climate too.” It has a link to an article and a picture of a bowl of rice. It has a quote saying “Should I just die”
A tweet by some news company saying “Your bowl of rice is hurting the climate too.” It has a link to an article and a picture of a bowl of rice. It has a quote saying “Should I just die”
Now it’s not just the ethanol mouthpiece ignoring all of the additional issues that using huge swaths of the planet to monocrop corn causes, it’s you too! My concerns about nitrogen replenishment, destruction of plant and animal habitats, and irresponsible use of limited land were clearly outlined and you refuse to address them because you cannot quantify them. In fact, you try to exclude them as factors and still say that ethanol is better for the planet as if it is a known truth. That’s my exact problem. We can’t quantify bioethanol as being better than x times better than fossil fuels because we can’t quantify exactly how fucked we are if we don’t stop practicing large scale agriculture in this destructive fashion. Or rather, I can’t, and you can’t, and neither of us have found a relevant study, and the pro-destroy the planet for shareholder value firms have far more money to fund studies than do the anti-DTPFSV groups so there’s going to be an imbalance in studies available to be cited.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good—advocate for funding public transit even if it’s less convenient for you personally than owning two cars.
I’m not ignoring the monocrop and other environmental issues, I am instead focusing on the biggest cause of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels and the associated warming from it. Yes, monocrops and destruction of native habitats are an issue, but I can’t do anything about that. I am not cutting down rainforest or logging natural forestland or burning prairieland.
I think both can be quantified to some extent. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to figure out which is better overall. We can certainly quantify the impacts of already existing production processes like corn bioethanol, sugarcane bioethanol, and gasoline using GHG life cycle analyses. I didn’t mean to say that bioethanol is always better than fossil fuel, I am sure there are some plants and production practices that could make it worse somewhere. But in the context of US corn bioethanol as produced today, it emits less greenhouse gases than gasoline per mile driven. See the links I already posted.
I would also guess that at Earth’s current population and consumption levels that we need some large scale ag to ensure people don’t starve (more than they already are). We can try to adapt it somewhat but it needs to be done carefully to ensure we don’t cause more harm. This has happened historically in other countries when they tried to radically change their food production processes and could happen again.
Large-scale ag is harmful especially when huge amounts of natural forestry and habitats are destroyed for crops, but it is a somewhat lesser cause than the fuels being burned and their CO2. Burning fossil fuels is responsible for something like 70%+ of emissions related to climate change.
I don’t own two cars, I don’t really drive anywhere even. Public transit is not feasible where I am due to low population density. But when I do drive, I can fuel up with a cleaner fuel (as can anyone else in the country). Different circumstances call for different solutions, so please don’t be so quick to assume that there is one universal best solution.