Biofuels have been touted as the response to an increasing oil consumption crisis — advocates say that biofuels will cut down on our CO2 emissions, reduce our dependency on a decreasing oil stock, and reduce the necessity for war and violence in oil-rich countries by extension.

But Jessie Dowling, a member of the Rising Tide collective — a group combating climate change — is wary of the biofuel bubble. Rising Tide was touring North America this spring in a van powered by recycled vegetable oil until there were problems with air in the fuel lines. Dowling thinks that recycled biodiesel does have a place in society, on farms or for use in public transport, but that its use requires a lot of experimentation and mechanical knowledge, and is not the end-all solution to climate change woes. “We need to challenge the infrastructure of car culture in general, ” she asserts.

You won’t find recycled biodiesel on the market: it is developed by using the oil left over from restaurant and fast-food use. Individual consumers can utilize this oil to brew their own gas. Though the process can be tricky to master, diesel cars themselves do not need to be altered in order to use the fuel.

The majority of “biofuel” on the market today is ethanol. Ethanol is generally made from corn. Petrochemicals and fossil fuels are necessary for the production of corn for ethanol; coupled with the fact that ethanol contains only 60 per cent as much energy per litre as gasoline, its efficiency as a fuel is negligible anyway.

Ethanol also provides a significant threat to food crops and food sovereignty. There are 865 million people starving in the world, Dowling says, and “we don’t have enough arable land to grow crops to feed our cars. ” Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, states in an August 2001 article in CNNMoney that “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year.”

Shell is one of the world leaders in biofuel technology. It is also one of the largest oil conglomerates in the world. The company’s impact in the Niger delta region alone leaves little question about their commitment to environmentalism and social responsibility. The BBC ran a story in February 2006 asserting that Shell and its partners had been ordered to recompense the Ijaw people of the delta region to the tune of $1.5 billion. Why? Environmental degradation due to the oil industry has meant that fishing, farming, and even sourcing non-polluted drinking water has become extremely difficult. Most Nigerians donâe(TM)t even see the profits associated with the oil industry, for though Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, it is one of the poorest nations in Africa.

There is no reason why Shell’s previous conduct would change as it attempts to develop biofuel technology instead of oil. Exploitation of people and resources could easily occur as more land is needed to grow crops for biofuel.

Instead, biofuel as a buzzword is more likely an attempt at corporate “greenwashing, ” as companies attempt to market themselves as environmentally friendly through advertising campaigns that promote tokenistic environmental research and development or “corporate social responsibility. ” The Rising Tide presenters assert that BP (an international energy company) spends more on advertising than it does on renewable energy initiatives, for example.

According to Natural Resources Canada, Canadians consumed 9.7 billion litres of gasoline in the first three months of 2007, nearly two per cent higher than the same period last year. What is necessary now, more than the development of biofuels, is a more fundamental shift in the way we as Canadians consume and think about fuel.