People running out of gas, bio-fuels not a fix

People are quickly running out of natural gas. But one environmental expert said that bio-fuels… People are quickly running out of natural gas. But one environmental expert said that bio-fuels aren’t the solution. Pat Atkins, CEO of sustainability consulting firm Atkins 360, said he believes that bio-fuels, fuels produced from natural sources and refined into substances like ethanol, won’t provide a suitable replacement in the long term. People will burn through two-thirds of all available petroleum by 2040 if they continue at their current consumption rates, said Atkins in a lecture in Posvar Hall last night. Atkins said that in 1859 the world had access to three trillion barrels of natural gas, and people have since used one trillion of those barrels and will have used another trillion by 2040. The majority of the remaining natural gas, Atkins added, will be in forms that will be difficult to refine, such as oil shale, a form of sedimentary rock from which people can obtain the materials needed to produce oil. ‘We are living in interesting times,’ said Atkins, referring to a unique convergence of fuel and food problems. Ethanol production depends on crops like corn and sugar cane. This dependence, said Atkins, raises the price of food. ‘Food costs rose significantly in 2008 and remain high,’ he said. Atkins said that in July of this year, the price of corn hit a record high, despite production twice its normal rate. Atkins didn’t provide a single definite solution to the problem during his lecture. He said that people worldwide need to either reduce or eliminate their dependence on liquid fuel. Until they do so, he said, they must balance their natural gas consumption while working to find alternative fuel sources that would more effectively sustain human consumption than ethanol would. At the moment, Atkins said, he wasn’t sure what those sources would be.