Gasoline and diesel are the most versatile forms of energy. Unlike any other energy source, petroleum products are easily storable and transportable, so easy, that they move the world’stransport. What will we do when there is no more oil? It seems that much of the efforts that are being made in the research of new energy sources, follow these premises: Find a product that
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Has similar characteristics to those of oil
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Can be used in machinery that runs on oil today
The solution to these two premise relies on biofuel. In order to replace oil with something, anything, Governments, especially the U.S., are investing astronomical amounts in companies that develop genetically modified organisms to ensure the rapid growth of crops in pursuance of producing more biofuel, or in companies that have discovered a biofuel suitable for jets.
The world wants liquid energy to keep it running and to achieve that, whilst governments keep investing, regardless of any ethical consideration on the use and implications of the excessive development of biofuels or the investment funds, whilst other moguls, get engaged in buying cheap land, swindling the developing world, deforesting, uprooting the native population, impoverishing the area, dividing it into ‘bio’ parcels to then produce and export the golden liquid.
We know biofuels are needed. There is a transport fleet too big to let it crash! But efforts should turn on biofuel research aroundartificially grown organisms, or artificially created organisms. Biofuels cannot stand for :
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Deforestation
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Decrease of arable land for human consumption
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Acceleration of the food crisis
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Extreme use of water
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Creation of genetically modified organisms that will replace formerly cultivated crops for human consumption
We cannot afford a no-rules game. Replacing the problem of fossil fuel depletion with a major problem in the form of increased global inequalities, impoverishment of large parts of the planet, and the food crisis will only increase the ecological and social gap where a few countries live at the expense of others.
Sylvia García 
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