The Biofuel Follies: To avoid drilling in ANWR, planet savers prefer destroying forests that absorb greenhouse gases
George F. Will: Energy policy has become a mare’s nest of environmental and national-security fallacies. Energetic rethinking is in order.
To avoid drilling for oil in ANWR’s moonscape, the planet savers evidently prefer destroying forests, even though they absorb greenhouse gases. Will ethanol prevent more carbon-dioxide emissions than would have been absorbed by the trees cut down to clear land for the production of crops for ethanol? Be that as it may, governments mandating the use of biofuels are one reason for the global rise in food prices, which is driving demand for more arable land. That demand is driving the destruction of forests—and animal habitats. In Indonesia alone, 44 million acres have been razed to make way for production of palm oil.
The destruction of forests is one reason European governments are rethinking their biofuel enthusiasm. The European Union has awakened to the fact that growing crops (which requires diesel fuel for tractors, and nitrogen fertilizer made with natural gas) and turning them into biofuel (transporting them to energy-devouring manufacturing plants) takes a toll on the environment. So the EU might require—talk about lowered expectations—that any biofuel represent “a minimal level of greenhouse-gas savings.”