I hate these link-dump posts. Really I do. But I only get to spend about half my time working on the blog, and so much good stuff rushes past ... whaddya gonna do? I don't want my faithful reader(s?) to miss any of it. So here goes:
- Moving Ideas (from The American Prospect) has set up a site on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which they lamentably call ANWR), including tons of info and links to action. Check it out.
- From -- no kidding -- Cheese Market News, word that demand for organic milk is outstripping supply -- of course, I can't link directly to the story, because the site uses frames. Who still does that? But you can read the piece here. (via Jeff)
- A fascinating BBC story about the rise and fall of ethanol in Brazil in the 70s serves as a great lesson on how vulnerable green energy initiatives are to (among other things) the fluctuating price of oil. (via Mike)
- The Oil Drum briefly summarizes a radio interview with James Kunstler.
- Biomimicry is one of the things I'm fascinated by that, for whatever reason, I never get around to writing about here. The Economist has a nice, brief description of the phenomenon and some of its successes. (via TH)
- From Treehugger, word that Patagonia and Merrell are teaming up for a line of shoes (speaking of Patagonia, don't miss our interview with Yvon Chouinard, the company's founder), and an interesting piece on guilt-free biodiesel.
- Alex Steffen links to the video of a townhall discussion involving him, Andrew Light (who was once our InterActivist), Terry Tempest Williams (who once wrote us a series of Dispatches), Stuart Cowan, and David Conrad. Very interesting.
- And finally, a Yale poll reveals that the public overwhelmingly supports an energy policy that moves us toward energy independence.
Comments
View as Flat
Biodiversivist Posted 3:22 pm
10 Jun 2005
With over 800 million malnourished people on the planet, we will soon be converting our remaining forests, jungles, and croplands into fields of sugarcane and soybeans for fuel. The profit motive is about to eat what is left of our biodiversity. Competition for cropland will raise the price of food and increase the pressure to make more cropland. Bye Bye Amazon jungle, Congo basin, and anyplace else that can grow plants.
It makes perfect sense. The poor cannot afford the abundance of food we now grow so we will use the land to make fuel for those who are already overweight and cannot eat more food but will buy biodiesel.
This is an ecological disaster in the making. Brace yourself Mother Earth.
The following is a repeat of an earlier post I made on this subject:
All of these schemes coming along to use plant material to meet our power needs are worrisome. It's difficult to remove a system once it becomes entrenched. Our original forests were largely consumed for energy needs. Once they were gone, we turned to coal, and finally oil and natural gas. Biodiesel is now competing with methanol for cropland. Great for farmers in the short run, bad for food prices and forests in the long run. Physics and a little common sense suggests that biofuels will never be less damaging to our ecosystems and habitats than the simple act of pumping fuel out of the ground, cracking it, and distributing it. It takes a barrel of crude oil to fill my car twice with diesel. It takes about an acre of organically grown crops (no petro-based fertilizer, herbicides, or pesticides) to do that. Ten acres of the planet would be dedicated to fill my tank each year. Multiply that times about 150 million, and you will find that about 1.5 billion acres would be needed to fill today's fuel tanks. That is over three times the amount of farmland that we currently have.
Big ugly spider
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Help acquire and protect ecological hotspots, give to a conservation organization: http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com
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bhurley Posted 9:24 pm
10 Jun 2005
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Tom Andersen Posted 1:27 am
11 Jun 2005
Tom Andersen
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jdhlax Posted 9:17 am
12 Jun 2005
Destruction of ecoystems like ANWR;
Turning our waterways into oil slicks, like the 15 year old Exxon Valdez spill, from which the area has still not recovered;
Turning areas around refineries into ecological sacrifice zones by polluting them with toxic chemicals; and
Creating massive air pollution, including contributing to global warming.
That said, I agree that we should not destroy natural land in order to grow fuel. (In fact, I advocate a return to a hunter-gatherer lifesytle, as agriculture is not natural and is extremely ecologically destructive.) The point is that overly wealthy humans (i.e., the 8% who own cars and the rest who want to do so) must figure out that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Driving is very ecologically and environmentally destructive, and the only answer is to eliminate it. We've known for decades how to build communities that can be adequately served by public transit, walking, and biking. Now we just have to make it happen.
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