Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Biofuel Bull

From this post:
Suddenly, everyone is noticing what libertarians have been saying for years—that the high price and low market interest in biofuels was telling us something.

The free market isn’t just a way of getting cheap iPods. It’s the original information super highway, giving us nonstop information on resource scarcity. That the market had little interest in biofuels without government prodding was telling us that they were a disaster. If biofuels were so wonderful, companies would be cutting each other’s throats to exploit them.

1 comment:

al fin said...

The problem with posts like this is that they are based on very old scientific/economic data. In this case, he bases his argument on a Wired article that is based on the usual suspect Science articles--which discussed first generation biofuels.

It's true that 1st gen biofuels like corn ethanol and palm seed oils have low returns on energy invested, and produce unfortunate side effects in markets.

Unfortunately for people making these arguments, the science and economics has passed them by.

Although these arguments are being indulged in by people all over the ideological spectrum, in essence they are bio-luddist malthusian arguments.