Biofuels

Nowadays, people started to value the development of biofuels and have been a great discussion about the issue of using biofuels. Although, biofuels are normally considered to be one of the promising sources of renewable energy and play a vital role in human life by environmentalists, many studies in recent years show that using biofurls will have many problems come out which will damage economy such as food shortage which is related to raising the food crops price. According to Aditya Chakrabortty (2008) claims that biofuels have caused global food prices raise by three quarter. Moreover producing biofuels are probably no benefit at all and it will construct a worse environment (Corbyn 2007). This essay will discuss whether biofuels can solve the entire energy problem and the positive and negative point of utilizing biofuels. According to UCDAVIS (University of California 2007) the definition of biofuels, such as ethanol, methanol and biodiesel are renewable fuels which refine from biological substance that can be reproduced. This differentiates them from fossil fuels which are deliberated non-renewable. Biofuels are recommended that it can cope with the energy problem. Philips (2008) claims that biofuels has been seen as a reasonable replacement for fossil fuels by many environmentalists. In generally, the suggestion are good as biofuels are a renewable resource which is normally derived from farming products and it can be used in our daily life instead of petroleum, therefore, the dependency of petroleum will deduce, therefore it may help to reduce global warming (Sunday Times 2007). However, the worldwide influence in economy has been obvious by using bidfuels which is associated to the increased food price and food shortage. A couple of years ago, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation asserted that there were 37 countries presently faced food crisis and “some experts ... have identified the growth of biofuels as one of the main cause of higher food prices” which is reporting by Healy (2008). Because of the dependency of using natural vegetation and crops for energy has increased on the expeditious development of ethanol and biodiesel, its production has also brought in a demand for the poor which will cause the trade between food and biofuels production and the higher-food-prices (Joachim 2008). This problem is considered by many countries such as The US and some European countries. They have claimed over and over again that the impact of food crisis had almost disappeared, but according to a private World Bank report obtained by the Guardian (Shah 2008) the global food prices had raised by 75% because of biofuels, it is much more than they expected previously. Furthermore, the affect on environment such as carbon emissions is other major problem which has been considered by the environmentalist. It is known that utilizing biofuels may increase the greenhouse gas emissions. In a recent news states that biofuels cause four times more climate-warming emissions than the non-renewable energy at the moment which is making no sense (Gray 2010). "What we are saying is that growing biofuels is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse" (Smith as cited in corbyn 2007). Producing and utilising biofuels may essentially increase rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions which were supported by a Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen (Corbyn 2007). In addition, the increasing greenhouse gas related to the global warming. If global warming continues, the level of water will increase, those countries such as Indonesian will be first suffered. According to The Geographical (2007), Indonesians were being encouraged not to use biofuels because sea level will increase, which could result those 2000 of Indonesian islands will disappear, if they continue use biofuels. How could biofuels solve the energy problem without damaging the environment that is a question that scientists want to found out as early as possible. Although some scientist have resulted that some biofuels can decrease greenhouse gas emissions, generally, production paths present higher impacts than petrol in a variety of other environmental indicators (Kalaugher 2008), therefore “we need to be smart and promote the right biofuels”, otherwise, we just seriously destroy the environment (Laurance, 2008). In addition, another problem is deforestation. It is necessary to clean environmentally sensitive areas to expand the land to grow the agricultural products. An OECD report (Corbyn 2007) warned countries to defer plunging into increasing energy crops because there is the reason of damaging in biodiversity. In other world, the displacement of crops also threat biodiversity (Healy 2008). Some people in Europe finally believe the possibility of biofuels that threat carbon sink and the biodiversity because of those vanished forests. It cannot be stopped unless there are another way to face demand instead of used more land (Finley 2006). To conclude, using biofuels has resulted in many disadvantages than advantages all over the world. Despite the fact that the aims of producing biofuels are deal with the global energy problem, it does not mean that biofuels can solve the entire energy problem. The produce of making biofuels should have many improvements, otherwise, it will make our environment become worse, and this resulted in global warming and the raise sea level. In addition, diversity of species will also be affected. Because of the disadvantages of using biofules, which cause a lot of serious problems, the use of biofules should be reduce. In order to replace using biofules, Australia Government should propose to use other renewable energy such as wind power, water power and solar energy which is harmless to environment. If they are continues using biofuels, economic and environment will influence badly because all human beings continue to suffer from the impacts. Reference list ‘Are biofuels causing harm'; World watch.’ Sunday Times, 2007, viewed 11th May 2010, < http://find.galegroup.com/> P. 27. 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