Sugar Cane: Worth the Energy?

With Brazil turning itself into the planet's renewable energy leader, it comes with it a slew of problems. Sugar cane provides Brazil with ethanol, which 8 out of every 10 Brazilian cars run on. The fields where sugar cane grows stretches for hundreds of miles, and that's where the problem begins. Ethanol is growing faster as a renewable energy resource and Brazil is taking advantage of the benefits. Environmentalists fear that with the growing usage of sugar cane ethanol that the fields in which they grow will expand into the Amazon rain forest. Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program worries that the protection of the rain forest is "a question of whether the Amazon is sufficiently protected and whether the expansion of the ethanol production happens in the context of government policies that try and direct that growth potential in a sustainable base." While the development of sustainable resources is great for the environment and the economy, there will always be debate on which resource of promote. Sugar cane is helping the world in the growing energy crisis while protecting the rain forest could provide us with much greater benefits in the future.