Can Biofuels Rescue American Prairies?
IT IS boom time in the agricultural states of the American Midwest. On bumper stickers and billboards, locals are celebrating the arrival of a profitable industry. Golden corn cobs are being turned into ethanol, an alternative to gasoline. If you believe the posters, corn ethanol will enrich the environment as well as the region, while reducing dependence on foreign oil. But one group definitely does not buy the sales talk. Last week in San Jose, California, ecologists lined up to criticise corn ethanol. At a special session of the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), they argued that the expansion of corn ethanol is damaging soils and threatening wildlife, while doing little to cut US greenhouse gas emissions. Ecologists also fear that the corn boom will suck resources away from the development of cellulosic ethanol, extracted from fast-growing wild grasses. They claim that this technology … The complete article is 1661 words long. To continue reading this arti
