Fwd: FW: Bio-fuel: savior or disaster?

March 7, 2006

> Bio-fuel: savior or disaster?

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> <DIV>Editor's Note: There

> is a lot of talk these days

> about biofuels as one part of a solution to global

> warming and to decrease

> dependency on oil. But do prospects of the

> widespread use of biofuels bring all

> good news? Not according to George Monbiot who is

> especially concerned with the

> land required to produce these fuels and the

> potential for this to take priority

> over food supplies. We need to have dialogue on this

> issue of using farmed

> products for transportation fuel. We welcome your

> contributions to the

> dialogue. </DIV>

> <DIV> </DIV>

> <DIV><A

>

href= " http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/ " ><FONT

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> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>Feeding Cars, Not

> People December 12,

> 2004 By George Monbiot 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 > 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. <A

> href= " http://www.monbiot.com " ><FONT

> face= " Times New Roman "

> size=3>www.monbiot.com</A> <FONT

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>References: 1.

> The European Union, 8th May

> 2003. Directive 2003/30/EC: On the Promotion of

> the Use of Biofuels or Other

> Renewable Fuels for Transport. Official Journal L

> 123 , 17/05/2003 P. 0042 -

> 0046. 2. Eg Monsanto, no date. The Biodiesel

> Revolution. <A

>

href= " http://www.monsanto.co.uk/biofuels/071202.html " ><FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://www.monsanto.co.uk/biofuels/071202.html</A><FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>. 3. British

> Association for Biofuels and

> Oils, no date. Memorandum to the Royal Commission

> on Environmental

> Pollution. <A

>

href= " http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/press_release/royal_commission_on_environment " >\

<FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/press_release/royal_commission_on_environment<\

/FONT></A> <FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>a.htm 4. Robin

> McKie, 21st November 2004.

> Forget the tiger. Put some mushrooms in your tank

> . The Observer. 5.

> Department for Transport, 2004. Petroleum

> Consumption: by Transport Mode and

> Fuel Type. <A

>

href= " http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/page/dft " ><\

FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/page/dft</\

FONT></A><FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

> size=3>_ transstats_031767.pdf 6.

> Department

> for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Crops

> for Energy Branch, 17th

> November 2004. Pers comm. 7. ibid. 8.

> Department for Environment,

> Food and Rural Affairs, 2004. Agriculture in the

> UK 2003. <A

>

href= " http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/auk/2003/chapter3.pdf " ><FO\

NT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/auk/2003/chapter3.pdf</FO\

NT></A> <FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>9. Lester R. Brown,

> 1997. The Agricultural Link:

> How Environmental Deterioration Could Disrupt

> Economic Progress. Worldwatch

> Paper 136. The Worldwatch Institute, Washington

> DC. 10. Dr Peter Read,

> 20th October 2004. Good news on climate

> change. Abrupt Climate Change

> Strategy Workshop. Press Release. <A

>

href= " http://www.accstrategy.org/goodnews.html " ><FONT

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://www.accstrategy.org/goodnews.html</A> <FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>11. House of Commons

> Committee on Environment,

> Food and Rural Affairs, 29 October 2003.

> Seventeenth Report. <A

>

href= " http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmenvfru/929/ " >\

<FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman "

>

size=3>http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmenvfru/929/<\

/FONT></A> <FONT

>

> face= " Times New Roman " size=3>92902.htm</DIV>

> <DIV><FONT face= " Times New Roman "

> size=3> </DIV>

> <DIV>WHO WE ARE: This e-mail service shares

> information to help more

> people discuss crucial policy issues affecting

> global food security. The

> service is managed by Amber McNair of the University

> of Toronto in partnership

> with the Centre for Urban Health Initiatives (CUHI)

> and Wayne Roberts of the

> Toronto Food Policy Council, in partnership with the

> Community Food Security

> Coalition, World Hunger Year, and International

> Partners for Sustainable

> Agriculture. Please help by sending information

> or names and e-mail

> addresses of co-workers who'd like to receive this

> service, to <A

>

href= " foodnews " >foodnews</A><B\

R></DIV></BODY></HTML>

>

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