Without a doubt, we need fossil fuels. We’ve built the most successful economy in history around them.

And our global appetite for petroleum continues to grow. In the United States alone, we consume nearly 40 quadrillion BTUs every year. (That’s 15 zeroes – a billion million.)

The costs are astronomical:

We spend over $200 billion on foreign oil every year. The impact on US jobs and the risk to national security is enormous.

And that doesn’t even begin to contemplate the environmental impact of such relentless extraction.

Certainly not the so-called "second generation" of alternative fuels. Corn. Switch grass. Soybeans. Sugar-based refining processes. None of these biodiesel or ethanol end products are going to get us where we need to go, especially when we measure their impact on agricultural land, water usage, fertilizer run off, food prices and the incalculable cost of international deforestation.

Not to mention that neither biodiesel nor ethanol work with the existing refining, distribution and supply chain infrastructure. Not to mention if you use either in your car’s gas tank you might negate the warranty.

The Middle East continues to grow even less stable. American farms are hitching their plows to ethanol. The Rain Forest is being mowed down and paved with soybeans. And rising food prices are impacting families all over the globe.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Fossil fuels aren’t the answer, but neither are biofuels that require refined starches and sugars from crops that are better suited to our communal dinner table.