Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>]

I am very interested in this discussion and since it
pertains, do you have to take it off list?

I would add points that are randomly pro and con but
considering the situation I think each point would be
interesting and perhaps useful.

A) The tax cost needs to be compared to the tax cost
of all the other solutions, otherwise it is a
nonsequiture.  The Tax cost of each gallon of
petroleum used on the road was $12 per gallon prior to
the war (according to National Geographic)  So a tax
cost would have to be sizable to  make it
impracticable.

B) The cost of production and its efficiency are very
likely to go sharply down as more effective source
crops go up than the over-stated corn and beet crops. 
Water Hyacinth and Duckweed both can be grown with
increasing efficiency to create Methane and even
Mesquite is being looked at
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_biomass_projects.htm

C) LEEDS and ZED standards for communities must be
adopted. Politicians sold our country's future and
interests to Petroleum, Automotive and other mega
lobby concerns and we have to stop it.  We need to
reconfigure our agricultural prerogatives to long-term
sustainability and shrink the footprint of our
national lifestyle.  We need to tear up some of these
roads to become commuter/cargo train routes and
community mass transit, not pave over more and more
farmland to service auto motives and sprawl we cannot
sustain.

D) Metal shortages are likely to stop or stymie
several of our current promising technologies.  The
metals that make our solar cells work, for instance. 
If we want to do something besides Bio-fuels that
needs looking at.


Yours, Pego

Mark Nagel said:
"Just signed myself up to be on a discussion panel on
biofuels. Obviously I'm on the "con" side. ....

Paul said: 
1. ethanol is not the pollution free fuel 
2. ethanol produces little energy above manufacture
3. cropland is being diverted from food 
4. driving up food prices and fertilizer prices
5. ethanol requires vast amounts of tax money 


Doug added:
6. Ethanol requires water, top soil and natural gas to
grow. Do we really want to use up the last.. to keep
our happy motoring love affair with the automobile
going? Or more sustainable solutions ... Biofuels
could be very useful on a small, local scale, ..But,
trying to keep America's gargantuan auto fleet running
on biofuels is a disaster of epic proportions, in my
opinion.



      
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