Sustainable Biofuels?

Biofuel is a word that nowadays pretty much just means ethanol. But, to be complete, the category also includes wood chips, peat...pretty much anything made from biotic matter that can be used to generate energy. People (especially in the biofuel industry) argue that biofuels are a sustainable and climate-friendly way to generate energy. However, we sometimes can forget that biofuels are more complicated than they appear - after all, when envisioned on a large scale, biofuel production requires either the systematic heavy usage of a natural resource (such as the peat swamps) or the cultivation of a monoculture of plant products. If this monoculture is grown traditionally, it will require fertilizer and other petroleum products and will be energy intensive. Making the situation worse is the fact that right now, ethanol (the most popular form of biofuel) only comes from plants such as sugar, which are intensive crops to grow. The hope is that sometime in the future ethanol will be produced from cellulose, which would allow processing of a much wider variety of plants. To put it simply, the danger with biofuels is that although they are good for the environment in some respects, they may enlarge upon the dangers and negative effects of industrial agriculture. Cutting down rainforest in order to power our transportation system with ethanol does not seem like a great idea. Check out bbc.com - the nature section for a great set of articles on this issue.