Fwd: [Cob] sustainability

[Amanda Peck]

We wish.

We wish that all the biodiesel in the world was coming from leftovers.  It's 
true the people I know who are running biodiesel are making it from 
recycling fryer oil.  But.....

But....  Look for rape-seed/canola oil prices to rise as the EU mandates x 
percentage of the diesel fuel to be biodiesel.  The supply right now is very 
tight because of just that, I read in an article in Planet Ark (Reuters news 
stories more or less about the environment, published out of New Zealand I 
think) the other day.

The ethanol used in gasoline/ethanol mixures isn't going to come from a corn 
crop?  Ummmm.  It is now, and you can also buy dried corn off the cob for 
burning in specialized stoves.

Even something like Jean Pain's biogas, expanded to include a fair 
proportion of an area will rob the forests there of organic 
matter--fertilizer.

I'm afraid that we can't have solutions for everybody (even if the everybody 
agreed on the solutions) but we've all got to work out our answers for 
ourselves the best we can.   And others will argue, more or less correctly 
for the most part, that we could have chosen better.

(in this context it's interesting to go back and look at Judith Moffett's 
collections of stories collected as Ragged World, at the Directive from the 
Aliens who think we are ruining our nice little planet and they are just the 
people to make us stop.  Some read as dated--population and transportation 
were the big concerns there IIRC, my copy is loaned out right now--much less 
about our main concern here--green housing such as COB!)

....................
Jon Kerr wrote:
>

The point isn't to  suddenly switch to 'sustainability' methods and open up 
some clay  mines and start clearing forests so we can grow canola to turn 
into  biodiesel. That's a bunch of Fox-news strawman crap.   Biodiesel  
comes from biodegradable LEFTOVERS.