OPINION:
The U.S. Army has recently purchased a large quantity of biofuel-derived jet fuel at a cost of $59 per gallon — in spite of our financial crisis. The insanity of biofuel advocates lingers on like a bad case of the flu that people just cannot shake.
As a last-ditch effort to save a doomed energy policy, our politicians are now financing wildly irresponsible genetic-engineering research into creating artificial algae and bacteria they hope will miraculously lower the stratospheric cost of making biofuels. The problem is, the qualities you need to make biofuels even remotely affordable also makes those organisms terribly dangerous to the biosphere. You cannot possibly contain such environmentally infectious artificial life forms used for large-scale schemes covering millions of acres. Whatever Franken-organisms they create will immediately be carried around the world on the wings of birds.
Our politicians promised that “renewable energy will ignite our economy.” However, solar, wind power and biofuels have all been economic disasters, and they have not reduced carbon-dioxide emissions. Biofuel production has dramatically increased greenhouse-gas emissions. The price of food continues to climb as we turn corn into ethanol. Many politicians still brag about their support for biofuels, despite the millions of poor who have already died of malnutrition and related illnesses because global biofuel production has increased the cost of fertilizer, farmland and food all over the world.
They made cars and trucks our competitors for food. What did they expect would happen?
CHRISTOPHER CALDER
Eugene, Ore.
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