In a recent article in Grist magazine, author Kelly Hearn describes the South American (esp. Brazilian) effort to create an “ethanol empire”. In the wake of the environmentalist reverie over the utopian vision of emissions neutral automobiles, I wonder if anyone has actually paused to imagine what an ethanol economy might actually look like.

While some may see the outcomes of ethanol in terms of greater energy independence, reduced emissions, and renewable supplies, I see an endless sea of monoculture: rainforests destroyed to plant sugarcane and soybeans, the loss of endemic and agricultural biodiversity, and a greater reliance on agrotoxins.

In our mad dash to create meaningful solutions to the world’s energy crisis, we would be wise not to overlook the big picture. According to agricultural engineer William Chancellor, seven calories of fossil fuels are required for every calorie of food energy produced. It hardly seems reasonable to assume these numbers would be any different for an energy crop produced using industrial techniques.

According to Hearn, interest groups in the U.S. already feel threatened by the specter of cheap Latin American ethanol imports. Sadly, the free market clergy is missing the point when it comes to renewable energy and distributed production.

Elaborate supply chains and industrial ethanol production may very well consume more energy than they produce. Imagine a gallon of ethanol produced in the hinterlands of Brazil and then transported to someone’s gas tank in Southern California. Every step in the production chain will require energy: energy to run the tractors, energy to produce fertilizers and pesticides, energy to harvest and process the crop, and energy to transport it from Brazil to California.

Without actually sitting down and doing the math, my gut tells me that something smells rotten. So is talk of an “ethanol empire” really the kind of innovative thinking that will provide a meaningful solution, or is it more of the same garbage that got us into this mess in the first place?