Click here.

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.

That's what was written by the Associated Press. So if Roger of John Fleck have a problem with that, then they should contact the Associated Press.
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

Perhaps your comment was meant for "House committee hearings on politicization of climate science: guess who the Republicans invited?"?

I just hope all of my predictions don't come true. This was the first post I ever did on the subject 1.5 years ago.

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

produce terrible outcomes, just like is happening with corn ethanol in the U.S. And it is worth repeating- until we incorporate the full environmental costs into our actions we will get madness like this- economics is at the heart of the problem and solution.

J.S.

J.S. teaches environmental economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.

I read somewhere on http://www.palmoiltruthfoundation.com about this issue.