The Perils of the Coming Sugar Economy

The Perils of the Coming Sugar Economy: "The 21st century's bio-based future is called the 'sugar economy,' or the 'carbohydrate economy,' because industrial production will be based on biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues, plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented, and converted into high-value chemicals, polymers or other molecular building blocks. The director of Cargill's industrial bioproducts division explains: 'With advances in biotechnology, any chemical made from the carbon in oil could be made from the carbon found in plants.'

Biological engineering has the potential to affect virtually every sector of the economy that relies on fossil fuels — not only transportation fuels but also plastics, paints, cosmetics, adhesives, carpets, textiles, and thousands more consumer products. Advocates assure us that the 'food vs. fuel' debate will be irrelevant in the future sugar economy because feedstocks will come from cheap and plentiful 'cellulosic biomass' — plant matter composed of cellulose fibers (including crop residues such as rice straw, corn stalks, wheat straw, and wood chips as well as dedicated 'energy crops' such as switchgrass, fast-growing trees, algae, and even municipal waste). The giant stumbling block is that breaking down biological feedstocks into sugar requires a lot of energy and traditional chemistry
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The pattern is familiar. Once again, to satisfy its voracious consumption addiction, the North is poised to exploit the land, labor, and biological resources of the global South."