Biofuels boom could destroy rainforests

STANFORD, Calif., Feb. 19 (UPI) — A U.S. researcher is warning the boom in the production of biofuels might lead tropical farmers to destroy rainforests to plant biofuel crops.

Holly Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, said policies favoring biofuel crop production might actually contribute to, not slow, the process of climate change.

“If we run our cars on biofuels produced in the tropics, chances will be good that we are effectively burning rainforests in our gas tanks,” she said. “When trees are cut down to make room for new farmland, they are usually burned, sending their stored carbon to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That creates what’s called a carbon debt,” Gibbs said. “This is because the carbon lost from deforestation is much greater than the carbon saved from using the current-generation biofuels.”

United Press International