"The worst moment in history to demand biofuels"

As the world's population continues to grow toward a projected 9 billion people by the early 2040s, the demand for food, fresh water and energy will grow with it. At the same time, supplies (water, in particular) are shrinking. So, does it really make it sense to suddenly accelerate the use of crops to produce fuel to satisfy our seemingly endless demand for energy? Of course not, especially when you consider the amount of water it takes to produce that fuel by current processes. The obvious answer to that question raised by Dennis Avery is an emphatic no.
According to Avery, the demand for biofuels threatens moves toward sustainable farming practices and will further destroy rain forests. This is of course true if we continue to pursue current biofuel feed-stocks like corn, soy and even sugarcane. What we need to do is slow down the growth of fuel production from those sources and focus on next-generation sources like cellulose and algae. Of course, even those need to be monitored to make sure we aren't using excessive amounts of fresh water and that the energy input doesn't exceed the output. There are definitely a lot things we need to consider before moving forward too quickly, but moving quickly seems to be the one thing we're so good at.

[Source: Enter Stage Right]