permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Interesting article, Harmon. I think the author is doing some very careful 
flag-waving, though.

He likes sugar cane over corn, maintaining that cane doesn't displace 
anything of value even when grown on a massive scale. As a matter of fact, 
palm oil 
is a far better fuel crop than any of the other twenty or so species people 
have examined, from the standpoint of calories available per acre. It's way 
ahead 
of everything else as an efficient converter of land area to fuel.

As a result, tropical forest cover across the globe is being cleared as fast 
as can be accomplished, to start fresh plantations. It's a very lucrative 
business, and one that is desperately needed by the world's fuel customers. 
So 
long as there are more people, and more of them have money in their pockets, 
the 
need for more palm oil is inexorable.

What we don't particularly need, from an economic viewpoint, is orangutans. 
Or chimpanzees. The tropical forests are over-- that writing's on the wall 
already. They contribute nothing directly to our economic well being, and are 
as 
of 2008 still a not quite fully exploited economic resource.

If you accept this logic, by all means, yes, let's bring on the biofuels.