Challenges and Pitfalls of Plant-based Production Despite the comparatively rapid growth of the Carbohydrate Economy, the petrochemical industry still occupies the core position within capitalist industrial production. Despite some regulatory pressure to internalize costs, it still continues to externalize costs while moving ever more deeply into new areas of production. Oil remains the life-blood of industrial capitalism, the beneficiary of massive subsidies, perhaps $20 billion per year in North America (Myers & Kent, 2001). Despite the emergence of the exciting new realm of green chemistry, comparatively few research resources are going into carbohydrate as opposed to conventional hydrocarbon chemistry. The portion of plant-based production in the industrial economy is still small. In the US, plant matter is estimated to provide about 1 percent of the countrys transportation needs, 2 percent of its electricity needs, and 3 percent of its chemical needs (Morris, 2002). Manufacture of industrial and construction materials in US consumes about 175 million tons of petroleum and 300 million tons of inorganic metals each year, only 10 million tons of plant matter other than wood go into these products (Geiser, 2001, p. 259).