The Pros and Cons of Cornfields vs. Oilfields
About Me
- Madhusudan Katti
- I am an evolutionary ecologist who discovered birds as an undergrad after growing up a nature-oblivious urban kid near Bombay, went chasing after vanishing wildernesses as a graduate student, and returned to the city grown up as a reconciliation ecologist! I study ecological and evolutionary processes in more or less human dominated ecosystems with the goal of applying our understanding of these processes towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. I also hold a position as an Associate Professor of Vertebrate Ecology in California State University, Fresno.
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2 comments:
I continue to be suspicious about the bookkeeping methods used for determining the advantages and disadvantages of producing ethanol. The important question that is rarely addressed is, "How much surplus energy is produced by the ethanol process once you subtract out what's required for ag equipment and its fuel, fertilizers, pesticides, the power required by the processing plant for preparing, fermenting, and distilling the finished product, and so on?" This cartoon seems to assume that it doesn't take any energy to produce ethanol. To top this off, there's no attempt to address the carbon footprint effects of shifting marginal cropland back into production from pasture, hay, or conservation.
That is indeed a glaring hole in this cartoon! The entire fossil-fuel base of ethanol-from-corn production is externalized. As indeed - as you rightly point out -is the land and associated habitat costs of conversion to cornfields. I think this would make a good critical thinking exercise for students in environment / economics classes.
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