Saturday 9 February 2008

Suzuki Be Gone!

I’m a long way from being a profit mongering, raping the land industrialist, but I have to agree with the National Post editorial in considering David Suzuki last century’s news. On any number of occasions over past decades – yes decades, he may be from Middle Earth – he has ranted about the need to convert from fossil fuel to environment friendly biofuels. Lately, there have been a lot of scientific articles indicating that biofuels may not be quite as environmental friendly as had been hoped, one of them the topic of a New York Times article. A lead author of one of the papers, Joseph Fargione, also happens to be a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, which could hardly be described as being or acting anti-environment. Transportation costs, processing and razing more land for crops may actually cause greater problems, including increasing global warming. In addition, it has driven up the cost of wheat, corn and other food crops as they are diverted to fuel usage. This is not to say that biofuels will not be part of our future energy needs, but it will undoubtedly require more time and experimentation to lessen the negative impact now existent with their production. Meanwhile, David Suzuki ignores any science he does not agree with and is now pushing to plant the world with ‘switchgrass’ to become the next great fuel source. Professor Suzuki must have tons of fuel on hand, especially aviation gas, so he can continue to run after the disappearing limelight to which he has become addicted.

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