Environmental Talk

Sustainable flower power…

There’s been a lot of publicity lately about the practicality of using biofuels as a source of energy.

One of the drawbacks to corn and soy-based biofuels is that using these crops for fuel cuts into food supplies. Land that is currently used to grow crops for food is already being diverted to grow crops for use in producing fuel.

Commodity markets have filtered in the resulting cut-backs in food supplies and food prices have been rising at double-digit rates over the past year or so. It’s part of the efficient market mechanism of capitalism that, while everyone is focused on oil prices which aren’t going anywhere fast, food prices are going through the solar-paneled roof.

Not only is there no such thing as a free lunch, your lunch is getting more expensive faster than anything else.

I’m not real sure where we stand on the whole viability of biofuels as a source of energy, but recent discoveries about the Seashore Mallow (pictured above) sound like good news to me.

Not sustainable flower power…

It turns out the Seashore Mallow (or as it was known before it signed on with a PR firm, the Sweat Weed) has some of the advantages of other biofuels but also some unique characteristics that make it a better source of energy than soybeans or corn.

As this article puts it:

The flower has two advantages over other potential biofuel crops. It is, first of all, a perennial and so unlike soy will not require replanting every year. Secondly and crucially, it is a halophyte, highly resistant to salt. It is therefore possible to cultivate the Seashore Mallow in saltwater marshland and other areas in which most crops cannot be grown.

Unlike corn, no one is using Sweat Weed to make quesadillas, so production of biofuel from this flower won’t be cutting into available food supplies.

And, since the Seashore Mallow can grow in saltwater marshes, the area required for crop and fuel production is actually expanded.

It’s the proverbial win/win situation for everyone … except commodity speculators with long corn positions.

Mortimer! Get back in there and sell!

global warming, climate change, Seashore Mallow, Sweat Weed, biofuel, ethanol, corn, soybeans, food prices, gas prices, movie ticket prices, Trading Places, Eddie Murphy, Dan Ackroyd