Spreading awareness about environmental hazards, resorting to eco-friendly alternatives are certainly good news. But there seems to be a hitch somewhere. May be we are getting all perverse in our mad rush to make the world a greener place.
In many of our attempts to solve an environmental problem, we seem to over-see a more threatening problem likely to result. With increasing urge to use biofuels, rainforests, water availability, human rights, affordability of food price, etc seem to be at stake and these issues of concerns are well documented.
US President George W. Bush has called for production of 35 billion gallons per year of alternative motor fuels including ethanol by 2017 to wean their dependency on foreign fuel.
Though it would emit much lesser green-house gasses, it poses a threat to water availability Corn being the main source of ethanol production in the US, requires vast quantities of water for irrigation.”Poor water supplies in some parts of the US Midwest have already stopped a few ethanol refineries, also heavy water users, from being built in Iowa and Minnesota. If they had been built, water supplies to a few towns there may have suffered” said Schnoor, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Iowa. He also added, every gallon of ethanol produced leaves behind 8 grams of nitrogen, which may end up in the water bodies.
Using fertilizers was contemplated, but then again there is s risk of oxygen-starving nitrogen eventually entering into streams that run down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico making “dead zones”.
However, NRC reports said that Ethanol producers are learning to recycle water in refineries that make the fuel, and an emerging fuel, called cellulosic ethanol, which could be used to irrigate feed stocks like switchgrass. All contemplated, said and done, nature has its own way.
via : planetark
