BioD will be pleased to see the press doing its job:
Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.
Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Considering these emissions, Indonesia had quickly become the world's third-leading producer of carbon emissions that scientists believe are responsible for global warming, ranked after the United States and China, according to a study released in December by researchers from Wetlands International and Delft Hydraulics, both in the Netherlands.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:03 pm
30 Jan 2007
Note that the palms being destroyed in the foreground in the photo accompanying the article could well be nipah palms (also known as mangrove palms).
Tharticle provides an excellent example of a perverse, unintended consequence of a poorly thought-out subsidy.
However, let's not condemn all palm oil. Oil palms are no more intrinsically bad for the environment than sugar cane, and perhaps more protective of the soil than corn or soy beans. (And oil yields per acre are up to 10 times those of soybeans.) That is to say, it is not the crop so much as what is done to make new land available for the crop that is damaging to the environment.
But the point in all of this business is, whether or not a particular consumer sources its oil from a sustainably managed plantation or not, overall, it is the rising demand for oils in aggregate -- for food, for cosmetics, for fuel -- that will continue to boost commodity prices and thereby create pressure to open up new land for the growing of oil palm and soybeans.
Some easing of this pressure could come from expanding the planting of Jatropha curcus -- a hardy, drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing perennial shrub. The meal left over from crushing can be recycled as fertilizer. It is not a gold, or even a silver bullet, but it could provide a supplemental source of income for rural communities in developing countries, while helping to restore degraded land.
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Benny Big Eye Posted 9:58 pm
30 Jan 2007
http://tinyurl.com/3b25ut
From AP: " Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado who was invited by GOP lawmakers, said, "The reality is that science and politics are intermixed."
Benny Big Eye
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Ron Steenblik Posted 11:55 pm
30 Jan 2007
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:29 am
31 Jan 2007
If you go back to that old post, look at the comments to see how things and opinions can change with a little time.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jason D Scorse Posted 3:24 am
31 Jan 2007
J.S.
J.S. teaches environmental economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
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SamanthaG Posted 4:20 pm
01 Feb 2007
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