From an excellent article in Time:
Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the world's top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third according to a report by Wetlands International. Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. But most of the damage created by biofuels will be less direct and less obvious. In Brazil, for instance, only a tiny portion of the Amazon is being torn down to grow the sugarcane that fuels most Brazilian cars. More deforestation results from a chain reaction so vast it's subtle: U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, so U.S. soybean farmers are switching to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures, so Brazilian cattlemen are displaced to the Amazon. It's the remorseless economics of commodities markets. "The price of soybeans goes up," laments Sandro Menezes, a biologist with Conservation International in Brazil, "and the forest comes down."
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:34 am
30 Mar 2008
http://www.celsias.com/2008/03/27/through-the-amazon-to-d ...
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0324-amazon.html
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Colin Wright Posted 12:01 pm
30 Mar 2008
It makes me wonder if we couldn't get a discussion going that could come up with workable solutions, rather than just throw up our hands and say the planet is doomed.
For instance, could we all agree now that biofuels from agricultural lands are a bad thing? Could we get the enviros who supported biofuels to back up, take a fresh look at the unforeseen consequences, and lobby to get the ethanol mandates rescinded?
Could we even agree that the underlying pressure for biofuels come from oil depletion (and the flat production over the past three years)? And that mass transit offers us a partial way out of our car dependency?
Could we agree that we need a global carbon agreement that pays developing countries to save the lungs of the planet? How about even that ultimately we have a problem of too many people wanting too many things on a finite planet? And that we have to go beyond "market solutions"? The article touches on this here:The trouble is that even if there were enough financial incentives to keep the Amazon intact, high commodity prices would encourage deforestation elsewhere. And government mandates to increase biofuel production are going to boost commodity prices, which will only attract more investment. Until someone invents that protein chip, it's going to mean the worst of everything: higher food prices, more deforestation and more emissions.
There is no "protein chip" (whatever that is) is there?
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mongabay Posted 2:00 pm
30 Mar 2008
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Can cattle ranchers and soy farmers save the Amazon rainforest?
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0607-carter_interview.html
Nepstad
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Globalization could save the Amazon rainforest
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0604-nepstad_interview.html ...
55% of the Amazon may be lost by 2030
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0124-nepstad.html
How much would it cost to end Amazon deforestation?
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0128-brazil.html
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:57 am
31 Mar 2008
For those of you who were reading the Gristmill blog a few years ago, a study came out in Science headed by Alexander Farrell, that compared all of the corn ethanol studies and concluded that it was energy positive and that it reduced greenhouse gases. Here is what he has to say now:
"The situation is a lot more challenging than a lot of us thought,"
No shit.
" ...It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots ...a U.N. food expert recently called agrofuels a "crime against humanity ...Four years ago, two University of Minnesota researchers predicted the ranks of the hungry would drop to 625 million by 2025; last year, after adjusting for the inflationary effects of biofuels, they increased their prediction to 1.2 billion ...This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate ...But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it ..The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started.
How many times have all of these points been hammered home here on the Gistmill over the past few years while virtually all other environmental groups were promoting biofuels?
It may seem obvious now that when biofuels increase demand for crops, prices will rise and farms will expand into nature. But biofuel technology began on a small scale, and grain surpluses were common. Any ripples were inconsequential. When the scale becomes global, the outcome is entirely different, which is causing cheerleaders for biofuels to recalibrate. "We're all looking at the numbers in an entirely new way," says the Natural Resources Defense Council's Nathanael Greene, whose optimistic "Growing Energy" report in 2004 helped galvanize support for biofuels among green groups.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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