Comments Karen Orr has made

Mark Bittman on Video

Dave Roberts posted this video to Gristmill in May.

Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/17/223829/210

As I recall, the video runs 45 minutes to an hour.  On The great Mark Bittman on how to push meat off the center of the plate posted 1 year, 5 months ago 18 Responses

1 million vow to be vegetarian to reduce carbon

More than one million people in Taiwan have pledged to help cut carbon emissions by being a vegetarian. Taiwan's population is about 23 million, and the one million vegetarians would reduce at least 1.5 million tons of carbon emissions in Taiwan in one year.

The Union of NoMeatNoHeat made the announcement during its anti-global warming drive. Many prominent politicians, such as the legislative speaker, the environment minister, and Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayors all pledged to become vegetarians.

The Union said 20 percent of the world's carbon emissions are created by the livestock industry, which is higher than the 15 to 18 percent produced by all the world's transportation vehicles.

The Union said if a person eats only vegetables for a whole year, roughly 1.5 tons of carbon emissions can be cut.

http://english.rti.org.tw/Content/GetSingleNews.aspx?Cont ...On Still more reasons to eat local and lay off the beef posted 1 year, 5 months ago 33 Responses

Mr. Green Goes to Washington

In his March 22nd article in CounterPunch, Michael Donnelly writes that Al Gore buys his carbon off-sets from his own company, Generation Investment Management LLP.  See link directly below

Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore
http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly03222007.html

The following CounterPunch articles are by Jeffrey St. Clair

The Green Impostor: When Al Gore Was Veep
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03172007.html

Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03032007.htmlOn Personal ethics pledge my left foot posted 2 years, 8 months ago 11 Responses

Glory Boy and the Snail Darter

What do y'all think of Jeffrey St. Clair's Al Gore profile in Counterpunch?
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair03032007.html

Karen Orr
FloridaOn Defense in the NYT posted 2 years, 8 months ago 5 Responses

More biodiversity loss, rainforest destruction

Expanding large-scale agriculture to grow more sugarcane in Brazil will worsen the loss of species diversity, water-quality problems, and habitat fragmentation in some of the world's most biologically diverse regions.

The biofuels push will directly or indirectly increase the loss to Brazil's remaining natural high biodiversity areas, such as the Cerrado

The 740,100-square-mile Cerrado region is South America's largest savanna--one of the richest in the world, in terms of bird, reptile, fish, and insect species.

More than 50 percent of the Cerrado has already been transformed into pastureland, causing soil erosion, biodiversity loss, fragmentation, and the spread of nonnative grasses.

Most of the expansion required will affect the Cerrado ecosystem and the Amazon, already being destroyed for cattle pasture and soybean farming for animal feed.

Expansion of sugarcane plantations will displace soy and cattle farming in the Cerrado -- driving those operations into the forests which will be destroyed to make way for the farms.

The Amazon is further threatened by the oil palm industry which is now destroying rainforests in Southeast Asia, causing choking fires and greatly contributing to global warming.

The infrastructure is being created for international biofuel destruction
NYT: U.S. and Brazil Seek to Promote Ethanol in West
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/business/worldbusiness/ ...On U.S. works with Brazil to spread sugar cane ethanol posted 2 years, 8 months ago 18 Responses

Ethanol: A Costly Snake Oil and Danger to America

 Hello all,

You can read Ray Wallace's excellent article, "Ethanol: A Costly Snake Oil
and Danger to America." at this link
http://www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/basics/

The Energy Justice Network is a great source of information about ethanol
 and other energy issues.  Here you go ~
http://www.energyjustice.net/

Karen Orr
FloridaOn 'Cause what else can we feed our cattle? posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

The Ray Wallace E-mail

     "I'm a big believer in ethanol.... We're going to run into a constraint
       pretty soon, though. It turns out corn is needed for more than just
       ethanol. You got to feed your cows and feed your hogs."

         -- From President George W. Bush's January 30, 2007 speech in
             East Peoria, Illinois, as posted at this White House site:
             http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070130-...
- - -

     Cows are ruminants, they are meant to eat grass....

     Feeding corn and soy to cows results in a host of problems resulting in
the need to add daily doses of antibiotics to the feed to treat some of the
illnesses that occur. Things like liver abscesses are a common occurrence
among feedlot cattle....

     Aside from inappropriate grain and soy, feedlot cows are also fed any
or all of the following (all allowed by the FDA) feather meal, pig and fish
protein, chicken manure and pesticide-laden citrus peels. To protect against
the spread of mad cow disease, since 1997 the Animal Feed Rule prohibits
adding most mammalian materials to ruminant feed. However, chicken litter
and restaurant scraps (which both can contain bovine proteins) are still
allowed and many calves are still fed bovine blood meal.

     While they are being fed this concoction, designed to get them as heavy
as possible as quickly as possible, they are standing thigh deep in their
own waste creating an even bigger health problem  After slaughter, these
cows are then hosed off using high pressure sprays, which, rather than clean
the manure off the meat, imbeds it deeper into the muscle.

     And that is just cows.  Pigs and chickens are treated even worse....

          -- From "You are what you eat, eats," by Tanya Carwyn, at this
              Jan. 18, 2007 site of The Cherry Creek News and Central Denver
              Dispatch, Denver, Colorado:
              http://www.thecherrycreeknews.com/content/view/970/2/...
- - -

     Broiler litter contains bedding material, manure, wasted feed and
     feathers....

     Adding broiler litter to beef cattle rations at a level of 20% or
     higher ... generally meets the animal's needs for crude protein,
     calcium, and phosphorus....

     Cows may be wintered on a mixture of 89% litter.... Litter alone would
     meet the protein and energy needs of wintering cows if they ate enough
     of it....

     If cows are to be fed litter during lactation, start cows on litter
     rations before calving to ensure that intake is sufficient to meet
     nutritional requirements. Some animals may refuse to eat an adequate
     amount of broiler litter rations....

          -- From "Guidelines for Feeding Broiler Litter to Beef Cattle" at
              this North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service site:
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/publicat/wqwm/...

- - -

     The Delmarva Peninsula, comprising Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia on
the Chesapeake Bay, an area also known as the Eastern Shore, produces a
million tons of poultry manure a year, according to The Washington Post,
Oct. 3, 1997. This manure is called "litter" because it is the main thing
the birds bed in from the time they are born-a mixture of fecal droppings,
antibiotic residues, heavy metals, cysts, larvae, decaying carcasses,
sawdust, ground up chicken heads, USDA condemned slaughter products, and the
mammalian nervous system tissue responsible for Mad Cow Disease. Poultry
litter is used as crop fertilizer and is fed to cattle....

          -- From "Md Gov. Glendening Goes Almost Vegetarian" at this summer
              2001 site of United Poultry Concerns:
              http://www.upc-online.org/summer2001/glendening_semi_veg....
- - -

     "The litter feeding issue has been in the hands of the FDA since 2002,
       but as of yet, they haven't called a halt to its use as cattle feed.
       It's currently legal to feed litter to beef cattle...."

          -- Robert Seay, Benton County staff chair for the University of
              Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, as quoted at "In the
              News - August 2006: Arkansas cattle producers looking at
              emergency feed options," at this Aug. 25, 2006 site of the
              University of Arkansas, Division of Agriculture, Cooperative
              Extension Service:
              http://www.uaex.edu/news/august2006/0825litr.htm

- - -
With many thanks to December McSherry, cattle rancher, farmer, Florida
Sierra Club Agriculture Committee chair, and National Sierra Club
Agriculture Committee member.

# # #On It's only natural posted 2 years, 10 months ago 32 Responses

Cows fed chicken manure in the U.S.

The ethanol craze has doubled grain prices at local country elevators.
Corn has hit decade highs - around $4 a bushel.

High grain prices also mean increased feeding costs, making it more
expensive to fatten livestock like cattle.

The livestock industry, strained by rising grain prices, has turned to the
poultry industry for a new feed source -  chicken manure.

Cows may be wintered on a mixture of 89% chicken manure and 20% ground corn
Guidelines for Feeding Broiler Litter to Beef Cattle
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/publicat/wqwm/...

This manure is called "litter" because it is the main thing the birds bed in
from the time  they are born--a mixture of fecal droppings,antibiotic residues,
heavy metals, cysts, larvae, decaying carcasses, sawdust, ground up chicken
heads, USDA condemned slaughter products, and themammalian nervous
system tissue responsible for Mad Cow Disease.

Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN), the world's largest poultry producer,
gave an Environmental Award at their Annual Shareholders Meeting to
Dennis and Ginger Stoneburner who raise 150,000 chickens at their Glen Hill
Farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and feed 200 tons of chicken manure
to their 300 head of stocker cattle. They mix the remaining 630 tons of manure
with corn and sell it as bagged cattle feed.

Poultry farms in Arkansas produce 5,100 tons of manure each day.
Arkansas cattle producers looking at emergency feed options - News - August 2006
http://www.uaex.edu/news/august2006/0825litr.htm

T...

In addition to poultry waste and corn (corn sickens cattle), feedlot cows are also fed any
or all of the following (all allowed by the FDA) feather meal, pig and fish protein, and
pesticide-laden citrus peels.

 To protect against the spread of mad cow disease, since 1997 the Animal Feed
Rule prohibits adding most mammalian materials to ruminant feed.  However, chicken
 litter and restaurant scraps, which both can contain bovine proteins are still fed to calves.

While cows are being fed this concoction, designed to get them as heavy as possible as
quickly as possible, they're standing thigh deep in their own waste creating an even
bigger health problem.

After slaughter, these cows are then hosed off using high pressure sprays, which,
rather than clean the manure off the meat, imbeds it deeper into the muscle.

Factory farm operations put cattle manure in huge piles or storage pools that often
leak into nearby streams and ground water and exude stenches that make life miserable
for neighbors.

For feedlot operators, , manure isn't valuable fertilizer but a vexing disposal problem.

The need to deal with overwhelming amounts cow toxic manure has lead to another
source of air and water pollution - manure incineration for electricity greenwashed
 and promoted as "sustainable, green" energy.

The push for electricity from manure gives these huge livestock operations a
subsidized way to deal with their manure problem -- and even gives them an
incentive to expand.

If possible, pigs might be treated more cruelly than cows and chickens.

After Hurricane Floyd hit the floodplain and drowned more than 100,000
confined pigs in North Carolina, a temporary CAFO moratorium followed,
Smithfield immediately looked for states that had no regulations - Virginia,
Kentucky and Florida.

Environmentalists worked on a pig amendment to stop CAFO's
(6,000 pigs in 1 barn) from coming into Florida. It passed in 2002.

The hog CAFO's have since expanded to Virginia and Kentucky and
are destroying water quality in rivers and neighboring farmers wells. The
Right To Farm laws prohibit nuisance lawsuits and prohibit individuals, groups,
cities or counties from challenging permits.

Jeff Tietz has an excellent article on the history of Smithfield Foods and the
 horrors of hog factories in the December 8th, 2005 edition of Rolling Stone.  
The article can be accessed at this Tree Hugger site:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/boss_hog_rollin_1...On Why the vegetarian critique of meat-eating should make meat-eaters squirm posted 2 years, 10 months ago 103 Responses

Livestock's long shadow

Y'all,

I've put together links to reports, articles, websites and books about the effects of animal agriculture on the environment and health.  I hope there's something here of interest to you.

EarthSave Report: A New Global Warming Strategy:
How Environmentalists are Overlooking Vegetarianism as
the Most Effective Tool Against Climate Change in OUr
Lifetimes by Noam Mohr
http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm

Sustain...

Diet, Energy and Global Warming - University of Chicago report:
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~gidon/papers/nutri/nutriEI.pd...

Livestock's Long Shadow - U.N. report
http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/library/key_pub/longshad/...

The Poor Get Stuffed by George Monbiot
We cannot feed the world's livestock and the world's people:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/12/24/the-poor-get-s...

Veganism in a Nutshell by Bruce Friedrich:
http://www.drstevebest.org/papers/book_reviews/vegannutsh...

Rainforest Destruction: What's Meat Got to Do With It? by Steven Best:
http://www.drstevebest.org/papers/vegenvani/rainforest.ph...

The Coming Crisis:  Environmental Disaster, The Global Meat Culture,
And Your Health by Steven Best:
http://www.drstevebest.org/papers/vegenvani/crisis.php

Warrior for a Healthy Planet by James Faber
http://www.consciouschoice.com/1995-98/cc116/howardlyman....

Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth From the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat:
http://www.madcowboy.com/

Q: Who is behind the rap...

The True Cost of Food:
http://www.truecostoffood.org/leaders.asp

The Phys...

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell, II:
http://www.thechinastudy.com/about.html

The North ...

And finally.....

Bryanna's Vegan Feast:
http://www.bryannaclarkgrogan.com/page/page/579094.htm

Karen
FloridaOn Why the vegetarian critique of meat-eating should make meat-eaters squirm posted 2 years, 10 months ago 103 Responses

The adoption of biofuels would be a disaster

 The movement toward biofuels as an environmentally friendly alternative
to fossil fuels is a greenscam with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Bush brothers, a cabal of giant agro businesses, their paid
consultants and political cronies are behind a series of initiatives that
involve massive taxpayer funded subsidies to large environmentally
destructive corporations. Sadly, they're aided by a number of well
meaning but misguided groups and individuals.

Biofuels derived from corn, palm, soybeans, and other crops are not only
environmentally destructive, they can't be produced profitably without
massive subsidies - subsidies that should be used for environmentally
viable solutions such as conservation/efficiency initiatives and wind
and solar energy.

Biofuels are an economic, environmental and humanitarian disaster:

*  The production of biofuel from crops consumes more energy than it
produces.

*  The production of biofuels from crops will lead to more air
pollution, irreversible soil depletion, water depletion and pollution,
erosion, forest destruction, higher use of fossil fuels, pesticides,
fertilizers and harm to animals.

*  Crops to produce oils to meet the demand for biofuel are directly
destroying tens of thousands of square miles of rain forest now.

*  Fertilizer for biofuel production will lead to a massive increase in
phosphate strip mining, destroyed wetlands, poisoned water and disturbed
river systems.

*  Conversion of U.S. farmland from food production to fuel crop
production will lead to dependence on foreign nations for our food supply.

The subsidies required to make biofuel production "viable" are more
corporate welfare to the same giant agro companies damaging the
environment now. They divert funds from real solutions such as
conservation/efficiency initiatives, public transportation systems,
increased use of solar and wind energy, and sustainable small scale food
farming vs. massive monoculture fuel crop production.

Government mandates of biofuels for transport will further hasten
environmental destruction.

We can't grow our way out of the impending energy crisis with more
destructive practices that fuel more cars for more people to drive on
more roads to more parking lots to buy more junk.

The hard decisions can no longer be avoided.  There must be a massive
shift in our thinking, behavior and consumption.

The biofuels scam must be stopped in its' tracks. If it proceeds, we'll
plunge further into debt, destroy irreplaceable natural resources and
send another portion of the biosphere up in smoke.      

If you'd like more information on biofuels, see the Energy Justice Network FACT SHEET
 (http://www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/factsheet.html), Feeding Cars Not People
 (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/) and
Worse Than Fossil Fuel (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/ ) On Ethanol is suddenly all the rage in D.C. and Detroit posted 3 years, 8 months ago 18 Responses

The adoption of biofuels would be a disaster

Y'all,

Perhaps you'll find these two articles by George Monbiot of interest.  You can find his references by clicking the links beneath each article.
Energy Justice also has much information on biodiesel.  See http://www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/factsheet.html  

Karen Orr

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By promoting biodiesel  a market for the most destructive crop on earth is created. We must reduce demand, not alter supply to allow greenwashed motorists to feel better about themselves.

Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -
They will cross their fingers and place their faith in a series of technofixes, some of which work, and some of which cause more problems than they solve. They will study the potential of "clean coal", which so far remains an oxymoron, and accelarate the burial of carbon dioxide, which might or might not stay where it's put. They will promote "carbon offsets" (you pay someone else to annul your sins by planting trees or building hydroelectric dams) which have so far been a disastrous failure.(8) They will encourage the development of hydrogen fuel cells, which do not produce energy but use it, and the production of biofuels, which will set up a competition for arable land between cars and people, exacerbating the famines climate change is likely to cause.
Tell people something they know already,
and they will thank you for it. Tell them
something new, and they will hate you for it.
Feeding Cars, Not People

The adoption of biofuels would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 22nd November 2004

If human beings were without sin, we would still live in an imperfect world. Adam Smith's notion that by pursuing his own interest a man "frequently promotes that of ... society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it" and Karl Marx's picture of a society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" are both mocked by one obvious constraint. The world is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others.

It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for "biofuels". Biofuels are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon which the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bio-alcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.

Next month the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020.(1) To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20 pence a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra 45 euros a hectare to grow them.

Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straight away. This in fact was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Show in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he predicted. "But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum."(2) Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right.

I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster.

Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country,(3) equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel.

It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars - the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday.(4) I'd like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU's plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for bio-locomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease.

Road transport in the United Kingdom consumes 37.6 million tonnes of petroleum products a year.(5) The most productive oil crop which can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is between 3 and 3.5 tonnes per hectare.(6) One tonne of rapeseed produces 415 kilos of biodiesel.(7) So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel.

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the United Kingdom.(8) Switching to green fuels requires four and half times our arable area. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there was unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people's demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950.(9) The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today's agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world's major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry which has already destroyed most of Brazil's cerrado (one of the world's most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.

It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair's two big ideas - tackling global warming and helping Africa - could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, "provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply".(10) I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn't aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production - from rural incomes to skylark numbers - except the impact on food supply.(11)

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn't it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------

Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel - as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories"(7). Why? Because it's cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia"(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

The British government understands this. In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that "the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations)."(10) It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: "mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole"(11). So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary scheme" instead(12). Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelarate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway.

At other times it happily defies the European Union. But what the EU wants and what the government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals for protecting the environment"(13). Until recently, we had a policy of reducing the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises. Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6 billion - more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme(14). Instead of attempting to reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the South East Asian rainforests in order to be seen to do something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.

All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/On Ethanol is suddenly all the rage in D.C. and Detroit posted 3 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses

Biofuels, Biomass and Agriculture

Dear all,

You might be interested in these three articles regarding biofuels, biomass incineration and agriculture.

George Monbiot column ~
Feeding Cars, Not People: The adoption of biofuels would be a
humanitarian and environmental disaster
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

Paving the Amazon
Most worrisome to environmentalists is the fact that the interests of agribusiness seem to be trumping any hope of a sustainable future in the Amazon.
http://www.alternet.org/story/21417

Gainesville, Florida is faced with a second coal-fired power plant and biomass incineration promoted by the local Greenwash Party
GRU's Developer Welfare Plan
http://freeforallcandidates.com/gruwelfare.htm

Regards,

Karen Orr
Gainesville, FloridaOn Umbra on hybrids vs. veggie-oil cars posted 4 years, 8 months ago 11 Responses