Is there anyone left who doesn’t think it’s a good idea for America to use less oil?

You could be a dirty hippy who’s just watched An Inconvenient Truth and has inspired your entire dorm to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or a hard-typing patriot who wants to reduce America’s dependence on oil imported from those Islamo-whatever places that hate us for our freedom, or an oil company executive who just wants to get in on the profitable ground floor of whatever the heck America is going to fuel our beloved SUV’s with now that gasoline isn’t hip with the kids anymore, but unless you get your kicks huffing gas fumes, the idea of replacing oil with something a little closer to home and a little less prone to cause Al Gore to load up PowerPoint seems to have caught on pretty much across the board.

The follow-up question is harder to answer: So, what do we replace oil with?

The biggest contenders for America’s Next Top Fuel Source have been biofuels. For those of you who aren’t big Willie Nelson fans, the basic concept behind biofuels is that rather than turning a finite supply of petroleum into gasoline, we take a renewable supply of plant crops such as corn, sugar cane or switchgrass and turn it into a gasoline substitute such as ethanol.

For the past 30 years or so, corn-based ethanol has been the big daddy of biofuels in the United States. The production of corn-based ethanol has been subsidized by the federal government and many state governments since the 1970s, and despite vocal protests from libertarian types and people who run companies that produce other types of alternative fuels, those subsidies have grown to around $5 billion dollars a year. This includes a rather steep tariff on ethanol imported from other countries as well as tax credits for the farmers that produce ethanol.

And when I say “farmers”, I mean “Iowa caucus voters who make Presidential candidates change their minds about ethanol subsidies” and “agribusiness corporations like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), who as the largest producer of corn-based ethanol are the largest beneficiary of federal ethanol production subsidies and spend a lot of money lobbying Congress to keep that hot, buttery subsidy money flowing”.

Most of the corn-based ethanol that’s produced in the United States is blended with gasoline to make a 90% gasoline/10% ethanol blend that used to be called gasohol and is now called “E10” because apparently you can’t actually get drunk off of it. E10 can be used to fuel standard automobile engines, and new federal fuel standards have set a production benchmark of 7.6 billion gallons of biofuels such as ethanol by 2012, so if you hate the current ethanol subsidy, gird your loins to hate it even more over the next few years.

Some of you are probably saying “Okay, fine, the government can turn corn into fake gasoline or something, but can’t you, you know, eat corn? Aren’t there hungry people out there who might want to cut in line in front of your Hummer to get in on that whole ‘corn is edible’ action?”

According to a recent survey, 47% of Americans feel that increased production of corn-based ethanol has driven up food prices and thus increased the number of Americans who face going hungry.

Of course, this survey was sponsored by the Hormel Foods Corporation, a major producer of meat-based products (and since they make Spam, I use the phrase “meat-based” about as loosely as one can). Not to imply that just because ethanol demand has increased corn prices and thus the cost of animal feed that Hormel would have any economic motives for pointing out the downsides of corn-based ethanol.

Not all of the opposition to biofuels like corn-based ethanol is based on Spam or a subscription to Reason magazine. Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, called the conversion of food crops like corn and sugar into biofuels a “crime against humanity” due to the impact it could have on the world’s food supply. Ziegler suggested a 5-year moratorium on turning edible crops into biofuels, during which scientists could develop or perfect ways to turn inedible agricultural waste into fuel.

Of course, since nobody loves a cranky dispute more than scientists, the ecological benefits of biofuels are being challenged as well.

Some scientific studies, primarily those conducted by David Pimental of Cornell University, suggest that the production of biofuels such as ethanol from food crops results in a net loss of energy, meaning that it takes more energy to make the biofuels than those fuels can produce. Several other studies contradict Pimental’s findings, claiming that biofuel production is a net energy gain. The difference between the two results seems to hinge on how many factors are included in the cost of production.

Even if biofuel production does result in a net energy increase, they might wind up producing as much or even more greenhouse gasses than using gasoline. Growing crops such as the corn, canola and sugar cane used to make biofuels releases nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere, a process that’s increased through the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers and other modern agricultural methods. More nitrous oxide is released when plant-based biofuel is burned. Nitrous oxide is one of the six greenhouse gasses covered by the Kyoto Protocol as a contributor to global climate change.

The question is if replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, and thus reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions while increasing nitrous oxide emissions, would show a net benefit to our atmosphere and help curb global warming. Most scientists, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say that switching to biofuels would reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40%. However, a recent study by chemist Paul Crutzen suggests that growing many biofuel crops actually releases up to twice as much nitrous oxide as originally estimated. This would mean replacing fossil fuels with biofuels derived from corn and canola (currently the two most popular biofuel crops in the U.S. and Europe), would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions. Using sugar cane, the ethanol source of choice in Brazil, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall, but by less than some previous estimates. Since Crutzen’s conclusions are based not on studying biofuel plants but on studying the atmosphere and ice core records, some of his fellow scientists are disputing his methodology.

So while corporations try and figure out what crops to invest in, and the disparity between the wealthy and the starving continues to grow, we’ll wait for scientists to figure out what the fuck is going on and what’s the least environmentally damaging liquid to pour into an automobile to make it go vroom. I’m hoping it’ll turn out to be human blood, so I can help solve both global warming and overpopulation with my bitchin’ new vampire hot rod!