Peak soil?

A pretty damning judgment against biomass for energy:

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=107&Itemid=1 Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America

I tend towards skepticism as well, but also have "wishful thinking" that perhaps something can be done. My pessimism has an even worse realization - if modern farming isn't sustainable for biofuels, then it can't be sustainable for food production.

Al Gore says that facing global warming is a moral issue, and I somewhat squirm under the statement, maybe mostly since there's no clear "line in the sand" between moral and immoral behavior, unless LIVING itself is immoral. When is stealing moral or immoral? How do you find the difference between need and want when you're alive deciding what to do?

I still try to make lines in the sand. Perhaps ALL industrial scaled biofuel production is "immoral" (for being unsustainable). But perhaps the "morality"can't be fully defined by "costs" but as balanced by "benefits".

The immorality of global warming isn't just the "costs", but the questionable "benefits" as a result. We have lots of measurable benefits, but how many can we promise for the future?

And so with "peak soil", or whatever environmental cost or risk. The moral issue is perhaps that soil is too precious to use for powering machines. Perhaps we can get energy more directly anyway - solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and let the plants be for animal!

Overall the biggest moral issue for me is that we destroy the ability of the soil to produce the food we need when our unsustainable "supplement" run out.

I'm leaning toward Wendell Berry's belief on farming power - when a tractor can eat grass, he'll upgrade his horse. That's integrity!