A new European-based group calling itself "Biofuelwatch", on Wednesday issued an open letter addressed to the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and citizens of Europe, urging the EU to abandon its targets for biofuel use in Europe. Already, several other organizations and individuals have signed onto the letter.
The group is responding in part to a recent proposal by the European Commission to establish a mandatory minimum biofuel target of 10% of vehicle fuels by 2020.
The letter sets out eight reasons why the signatories want to abandon the targets:
- The biofuel targets, in the absence of much stronger commitments to reduce consumption, are counter-productive.
- The targets will negatively impact the global South.
- There is a risk of increased climate impacts from the use of biofuels.
- The production of biofuels will increase pressure on world food supplies and further erode food sovereignty.
- The production of biofuels could lead to more human rights violations related to the expansion of monocultures.
- Biofuel targets will fuel the expansion of genetically modified crops.
- If the EU applies incentives and subsidies to biofuels, these will further intensify all the pressures that we foresee from the targets.
- There is no credible certification process available at this point.
The letter concludes:
We therefore call on the Member States to reject the biofuel target for transport and halt all other incentives for biofuel production which could encourage in any way the use of biofuels linked to the problems described above. Instead, the focus should be on drastic reduction of energy use and support for genuinely sustainable renewables.
Wow!
Support for biofuels has never been as strong in Europe as it has been in the United States, in part because Europeans are less concerned about their dependency on imported oil, and they know they could never produce more than a small fraction of their liquid transport fuel requirements from home-grown biomass themselves.
Comments
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David Roberts Posted 5:20 am
02 Feb 2007
(Sorry, I'm new at this sloganeering business.)
www.grist.org
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Benny Big Eye Posted 5:29 am
02 Feb 2007
Then we'll get serious about alternative energy and conservation.
Benny Big Eye
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amazingdrx Posted 5:50 am
02 Feb 2007
Can Toyota and Honda be held back from mass production of plugins much longer? I doubt it, because other smaller companies are threatening to produce them.
Plugins will drop oil prices precipitously, and with the main oPEC members caught in a new middle east regional conflict they will need to maximize production.
If US forces are withdrawn from Iraq, the sunnis will commence wide scale war over the region with the shiia. that means Saudis and Iran will be more desperate than ever for cash to fund their war efforts.
This drop in oil will surely kill fuel farming. But I doubt it would kill plugins.
Why? Because consumers do not trust that low oil prices will continue and plugins will pay there own way in gas savings even at 2 bucks a gallon. Also it will be very patriotic to buy plugins in order to get the US off of it's oil and resulting oil war addiction.
Fuel farmed gas will be the same price as oil derived gas saving no money for consumers.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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andrewboswell Posted 6:31 pm
08 Feb 2007
See: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2007Jan31-signatures.html< ...
The EU Biofuels directive puts 20 Million hectares of rainforest in Indonesia at extreme risk. If destroyed, and its associated peat land is drained, this could release 50 Billion tonnes of carbon - the equivalent of 6 years of current levels of carbon emissions. When added to current extremely high levels of global fossil fuel emissions, it could take the planet over a climate tipping point.
Andrew Boswell, biofuelwatch
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Biodiversivist Posted 11:34 pm
08 Feb 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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