And Obama has been mentioning biodiesel lately, making higher subsidies more likely in the near future?

The whole world was moving towards more meat eating and gas guzzling.  And that is powered by grain, both meat production and biofuel substitute for oil based gas guzzling.

What is this energy inflation related economic slow down doing to these aspirations?  Will gas guzzling and meat eating in fast growth  countries (China, Brazil, Korea, India, Russia...)  overcome the failing consumer nation's (US, Europe...) economy's ability to shift away from meat eating and gas guzzling?

That would not be good.  But as we the consuming nations slow down, will the producer nations slow too?  Now that is the case.

But what will happen as producer nations become prosperous enough to become consumer nations?  They will feed on their own global economy.  We will be inconsequential, just as the UK used to control world trade in its empire days, and now is only a minor part of consumption.

We will be bypassed in the global trade system.

Unless we become producers again.  Scandanavian and European countries are shifting to production of devices for a new energy economy, taking a progressive leap to power that change.  

Healthcare and education free for all makes for a workforce with the skills and values to acomplish this change to reneweable revolution.  We are in a war to save the planet now.  If the mass of humanity follows the fossil fuel, gas guzzling, meat eating path.  We all lose.

There is a slim chance for leadership on this left.  But the guy who wants to do it favors biodiesel?  It's going to be tough to turn this around.

We have to convince the new government that 90% renewable electric transportation and a  90% (on average) veggie diet is the plan to regain our place of positive influence by example in this global economic system.  Invent and manufacture the devices to do this (and see the amazon reduced to a national forest or two here and there), or go the way of the UK.  That's the choice we face.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

"Invent and manufacture the devices to do this (and see the amazon reduced to a national forest or two here and there), or go the way of the UK."

I meant:

Invent and manufacture the devices to do this, or go the way of the UK (and see the Amazon reduced to a national forest or two, here and there).

As we see with our forests and prairies and wetlands here in the agribizz developed and devestated US ecosystem.  Only a few remnants of nature left.

They are following our example.  We need to turn that example around, consumers demanding solar panels and plugin hybrids will force the producer countries to catch up and build them too.  Interrupting their fossil fuelishness.

The colonial corporate emprists like darth cheney want to stall the renewable energy revolution, it would weaken their oily grip on their guns.  Would the military industrial complex end up in a nursing home?  A fitting end for them, if only we could mass produce renewable energy buildout.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

John,

I don't believe Obama means "biodiesel" in the traditional sense you and others think of it when he uses that term in his campaigning. He means (primarily) cellulosic ethanol. It's just that that term is a mouthful and one the majority of folks have never heard of. He is apparently in favor of increasing the availability of home-grown biodiesel, but even with this, my understanding is that he insists it come from sustainable sources only.

Richard

The Searchinger et al article is a speculative article, an important text, but it has no data on the direct links between deforestation and the production of biodiesel in Europe or the U.S. It only deals with indirect land use changes. And these cannot be quantified, only guesstimated.

Therefor the Searchinger article cannot be used as a basis for tieing deforestation to biofuel production.

The best thing to end the discussion about this is simply to forbid the use of soybeans for biodiesel (and palm oil and all other crops that directly drive deforestation as well) here in Europe or the US.

Better still would be to phase out liquid biofuels altogether, because there are far better ways to use a given piece of land.

Biodiversivist, if you were a powerful policy maker, what would your advice to Brazil be?

Remember, Europe and the US deforested over 90% of their forests, which allowed them to enter the era of modernity.

Is there a way to leapfrog deforestation-based modernity?

We know that ideas like paying forest-rich countries carbon credits to preserve their forests won't work. We also know that very few people in the West (and now the East) are willing to change their consumer behavior, which relies heavily on products sourced from land that was once forest. And we know that the desire of forest-rich nations to join modernity is extremely strong.

So what would your suggestion to Brazilian society be?