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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Ethanol proposals

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Loren Davidson <listmail@lorendavidson.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Ethanol proposals
  • Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 10:35:23 -0800

At 1:10 PM -0500 2/1/06, Dylan Ford wrote:
----- Original Message -----
"Toby Hemenway" wrote:

But I can't see ethanol ever becoming a significant long-term fuel if
derived from crops.


Toby,

don't know if you caught my post the other day, but what about ethanol
derived from food wastes, lawn trimmings, municipal tree trimmings,
cardboard, etc., etc., There's a lot of it, the stream never stops, and we
have to get rid of it somehow. That represents a lot of wasted calories.

Well, I'm not Toby...but it seems to me that a lot of the materials you suggest might be better used as compost, to rebuild topsoil. We're still losing topsoil at an alarming rate in this country, and replacing it with fertilizers derived from petrochemicals.

OTOH, there are probably other elements of the waste stream that wouldn't work as compost that *might* work for either methane or ethanol production.

Regardless, I think that substituting ethanol for gasoline is still the wrong solution to the wrong problem. We need to figure out how to structure our lives and our cities so that we just don't *use* as much energy. And therein lies a very big rub.

Loren

--
Loren Davidson listmail@lorendavidson.com
Folk music with tropical attitude - http://www.lorendavidson.com
"Don't try to describe a Kiss concert if you've never seen it,
Don't ever forget that you just may wind up in my songs" - J. Buffett




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