BioDiesel Worse Than Fossil Fuels?

George Monbiot wrote up this sobering post about the dangers of BioDiesel.

I know, I know, you are thinking: "Crazy! Biodiesel is WAY better than fossil fuels. It is a carbon sink!"

Well listen to the logic and despair...
I think that George hits it right on the head. Essentially, although BioDiesel as an energy source stops the introduction of new carbon from fossil fuels into the atmosphere (one of it's big selling points), it does not eliminiate the use of carbon, nor does it reduce the need for a SOURCE of this carbon, or it's circulation.

Fuel requires carbon to be locked up in order to store energy, and to be released in order to USE the energy. Since we are no longer using fossil fuels which already have the carbon sequestered, we need to generate these hydrocarbons in another way. The BioDiesel method uses plants to generate the energy used to lock up the carbon we need. Unfortunately, from a heavy industrial perspective, plants are not a particularly space efficient method of performing this task.

Plants are essentially really inefficient solar panels. Generating even a paltry amount of energy requires a LOT of space. So much space in fact that BioDiesel production is unlikely to be economically feasible for first world countries. Third world countries which are agriculturally viable however, with their vast tracts of arable cheap land (which are unfortunately almost always occupied by rainforests, biologically diverse local ecologies, or insufficiently armed indiginous populations), are likely to profit hugely from this product. Too bad you have to knock the forests down before planting the palm trees (or rapeseed, or algae lagoons, etc) that produce the oils needed.

Even if new croplands do not need to be freed up, you still need to displace the existing crops, so even in that case BioDiesel production comes at the expense of food production.