Finally some research has been done on the effects of bio-fuel crops on the ecosystem. As widely expected the research has shown that bio-fuels can be highly destructive on the environment as well as actually adding carbon into the atmosphere.

So much for being the replacement to fossil fuels.

This a prime example of doing something because it looks like the right or a good thing to be doing. Those people with prescriptive views on how we should live our lives rarely take the trouble to do the sums and that’s where the problem arises.

Until we start to price up environmental externalities and let them flow through the price mechanism we will not get to see the true cost. So we will keep doing things because they feel good to us or they remove some embedded guilt about the way we use the environment.

The market is working in an inefficient manner and the environment continues to suffer because of it. Many environmentalists have a big grudge against the market perceiving it to be a monstrous creation of the capitalist machine. They are sadly mistaken. The market is how we show the real value of the environment to everyone not just those who think humans are a stain upon it.

Now I don’t want to tar all bio-fuels with the same brush. Bio-diesel from algae for example is using a waste stream and an easily grown input. Large swathes of forest don’t need to be cut down for this process.

But until we see the costs flow through the system we just don’t know.

Tags: algae, bio-fuels, carbon, climate change, economics, ecosystem, environment, trucost