It is good that decision-makers in Europe, especially in Germany and Britain, so readily consider green concerns when they make their decisions.  That the spokesman for RWE should simply acknowledge that the company's project will not work because of the likely destruction of more rainforest, with serious implications both for atmospheric CO2 and for biodiversity, is amazing.

By contrast, it is difficult to consider e.g. Canadian mining companies with international projects at all concerned about environmental dangers, save inasmuch as they are PR problems.  One is set to open a mountain-destroying gold mine in Chile.  Another has been bit by bit coaxing and buying out the residents of a gold-rich region in Romania, which the ancient Romans were mining back when the place was called Dacia, so that the company may with their permission get started playing its arsenic-loaded game.  In both places there is stiff resistance to the mining projects on the part of many locals.  Those in Chile seem not likely to win; but those in Romania have some influential Western European allies, and may yet prevail.

Back to palm oil: I hope it is not true that Indonesia seriously intends for palm oil-based biofuel to be a major component of the country's energy sources.  It is one of the most unusual of the world's sovereign states: huge, sprawling, physically disunited, hard to govern, and in fact not all that well governed.  At least there seem to be serviceable networks of communication and transportation (allowing for the occasional crashes and sinkings with deaths in the hundreds), which ensure a degree of unity and continuity.  But it is hard not to suspect that its stability is always a bit precarious.

What ever happened to Robert Delfs, by the way?

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!