i think biofuels have their place, but without radically redesigning our lives around less driving, there is no way corn, rape, sunflowers, etc are going to keep everything running like we're used to it now.

eventually i think internal combustion will give way to electric motors, but i think biofuels can play an important part in the transition.

for example try and find electric tractors on the web.

i did find one guy in california who had made a prototype, with a massive battery bank (adding traction, but obviously compacting the soil more) and solar panels as a roof.

having one outside the house provides a nice backup supply of 12v, handily...

he would make one up for $20,000 or so.

i'd love one, but will have to do with my old diesel one for now, and if i can get it runnibg on biodiesel, i will consider it an enormous step forward, as the cloud of smoke one is surrounded by on a tractor, (unless there is a high wind!) is nasty and demotivating.

i've been around forklifts running on biodiesel, and the air was free of that horribly toxic diesel pong anyone stuck behind a lorry/truck knows only too well.

this is a hinge point, i believe, at the end of the day....peeps depend more on tractors and buses working than they do on trucks and cars.

maybe we'll go back to horse/oxen-drawn ploughing, i don't know, and don't necessarily think it's a bad thing, especially after reading here the real costs in water and waste of a gallon of ethanol.

from what i understand biodoesel and ethanol are different, in that it's still tragic when indonesia rips up climax forest to plant oil palm, and that's the level of stupidity we're facing, pathetically efforting to carry on business as usual, while the planet cooks up to a species-decimating boil...

however if some of the sunflowers are used to fuel the tractors that help grow the wheat for bread, that's appropriate, in my little book.

i think we don't need a tractor for every farm, either...more co-operation will be the norm, once farming returns to being a common way of life, depending on mutual support, instead of a market race based on acing your neighbour...

shooting up food prices and destroying forests so toys'r'us can keep its shelves groaning, and endless lorries schlep around goods that are mostly indulgent, not vital....is about to become a memory...

kids are quite happy playing with a a few pebbles and twigs, a puddle and a ragdoll, unless and until advertising has warped their pretty little brains....

funny, i'd bet that once we have driven this late, inebriated guest of planned obsolescence-consumerism from the table, there would be enough biofuels to power transport of medecines, and other really important stuff, at least during a transition period until everything could be switched to alt-electric.

it's this insane juggernaut of growth-at-any-cost that can never be sustained, not with any known fuel...

and i think it's ok and right that this madness stops, as it corrupts more absolutely than any historical heresy ever has, it strips us of human dignity, bringing out the very worst in our souls-

but if we can't resist it...well just maybe....gaia has a plan b....

reshuffle the deck, mama, you got little to lose but a buncha losers, mostly, and let the microchips fall where they lay....

and if you want to reboot humanity, i'd love to give it another go, there was such potential there.....


'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty