You’re getting to be that age. You know, that time in your life when you’re given that little laminated card, a golden ticket into the chocolate factory of adulthood and freedom. With license in tow, you coast through the streets with your tunes cranked on high. It’s great for the first few months, but after a while you realize that your mom’s minivan is just not cutting it; you want a car of your own. After relentless begging on your half, your parents finally agree. But before you get carried away with how you’re going to trick it out, what are you going to use to fill your whip? Yes, there’s the conventional gasoline, but have you considered diesel? What about the new globe-sweeping sensation of bio-diesel? To the unsuspecting consumer, it seems to be an earth-healthy alternative to petroleum, but in fact, it’s causing a lot more problems than it can solve.

Let’s think about the word: Bio-fuel. It sounds harmless enough. In fact, with the word “bio” in it, it even sounds conducive to the improvement of the environment. However, the name is only a seductive trap for those who are uninformed of its drawbacks.

Bio-fuels are any fuels made from living things or the waste that they produce. In recent years, this has come to describe bio-diesel and ethanol, made from crops including corn, rapeseed, and sugarcane.

In theory, bio-fuels are supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional petroleum fuels. However, the energy used to grow and process the plants needed to make the fuel can make bio-fuel as polluting as petrol-based fuels. Ethanol uses fossil fuels in every step of production. And growing the maize from which bio-fuels in the U.S. are primarily made uses 30% more energy than the final fuel produces. Ethanol also only gets 70% of the gas mileage that petroleum does and we all know how important it is to get good gas mileage these days. Bio-fuels present serious health threats as well. Though ethanol is found to reduce the level of two carcinogens in the atmosphere, it also increases the levels of other carcinogens, making its fumes just as cancerous as petrol fumes. Bio-fuels can also only use certain parts of the plant, leaving copious amounts of plant waste.

Environmentally, bio-fuels produce serious threats to biodiversity. Western farmlands are already predominately monoculture, with only one crop in a large area. It’s like having a store full of only plain white t-shirts instead of the dazzling array of colors in American Apparel. Large-scale adoption of bio-fuels could reduce the habitats for animals and wild plants even more. Most fuel would be imported from Brazil, where Amazonian forests are already being destroyed to make room to grow sugar and soybean. Critics say that Asian nations could also be tempted to replace rainforests with palm oil plantations.

An increase in the amount of food crops, like corn and soy, used for fuel will cause further food shortage problems among impoverished citizens. The amount of grain needed to produce enough ethanol to fill a Range Rover is the same amount of grain needed to feed one person for an entire year. If filled every two weeks, that amount of grain could feed a hungry village for a year. Two weeks’ worth of gas or a year’s worth of food: it’s not a hard decision. There simply is not enough land to feed the people of the world and the growing demand for bio-fuels.

If society wants to make a serious attempt at reducing carbon emissions, we should convert vehicles to battery-electric. Electricity from wind energy would eliminate 98% of car emissions. At the same time, we can’t expect to find a miracle solution that will end the problem of global warming. Many students may think that this issue doesn’t affect them, but it does. I know you’ve heard it a million times that it’s up to our generation to save the world, but really, it is. Don’t take a back seat. Pay now while the cost is still affordable.