Feeling blue over trying to be green

I thought I was going green. Instead, I was committing a crime against humanity.

Recently our family car was totaled in a wreck (no one was hurt). So I figured: Here's a chance to green up. To leave gas guzzling behind. To go off the oil grid.I'm talking biodiesel. Instead of running your car on noxious petroleum, you cruise about town powered by veggie oil.

It's all the eco-rage. The bumper stickers for biodiesel say "No war necessary." Pollute less, help cool the planet and marshal the renewable power of nature.

Or so the argument went. As recently as a few months ago.

But when we asked around about biodiesel, it didn't take long before the scolding started.

Biodiesel pollutes more than oil, said one e-mailer on a community site where my wife asked for advice. Another questioned our morality, saying it's wrong to use food for fuel when people are starving.

Then I heard there's a Seattle environmentalist who protests at local biodiesel stations. Above the green-painted pumps, he hangs this banner: BIOFUELS = CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

Now, I don't expect it to be easy being green. But this is ridiculous. What was hailed as our leading green alternative to petroleum is now an affront to humanity?

The banner is Duff Badgley's. He's a 63-year-old retired hospice worker who devotes much of his time to pillorying biofuels.

"It's a global scourge," he says. "A huge calamity. It's immensely worse than gasoline in terms of harm to the Earth. That it's being pushed in the name of the environment is an embarrassment."

Some recent studies back him up. Two papers, in the journal Science, rocked the biofuels world by claiming that plant-based fuels cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than dirty, evil old oil.

The reason is that it takes land to grow fuel. That inevitably leads to the destruction of forests and grasslands, the studies say.

I went to Dr. Dan to ask what I should do. Dan Freeman is a biodiesel pioneer. He sells soybean-oil fuel out of a Ballard pump house.

"How's biodiesel going? It's going to hell in a handbasket," says Dr. Dan.

It has promise, but it has lost its way, he says. The idea was to make it from local plant byproducts or waste, so land isn't cleared and there's no competing with food.

Instead, it is now an orgy of global agribusiness. Companies ship in foreign oils grown in hacked-down rain forests, then ship out the biodiesel, to sell in Europe.

It's led to local shortages and obscene prices. A gallon at Dr. Dan's is a knee-buckling $5.65. He's lost half his business this year.

All of this will be discussed at a biodiesel forum, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today at Seattle Center (more info at nwbiodiesel.org). Meanwhile, what's a driver to do?

"There's no techno fix," Badgley says. "The only answer is: Get out of your car."

But as we talked, he had to go catch a bus. A bus run by Metro, the largest user of biodiesel in the state.

"If they don't stop using biofuels, I might end up launching a protest against Metro," he said.

So, environmentalists may end up picketing the bus system. Is anything simple? Is it any wonder I'm paralyzed about which car to buy?

Hmm. Paralysis. Can't get any greener than that.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.