The back of the palm: biofuel disaster in the making
Posted by Charles II on June 4, 2007
Oliver Balch and Rory Carroll in The Guardian:
“Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy….
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Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia’s population of 3 million displaced people…”
Ok, so we’ve spent $10 B on Columbia alone. Cocaine production is up 27% since 1999 and 8% since last year alone. And paramilitaries, created by the war on some drugs, are creating a massive refugee crisis, wiping out banana plantations and other legal crops all for… what?
So that US presidents can brag to voters that they’re doing something about the drug trade?
As The Guardian editorialized:
“By adopting biofuels, politicians in rich countries effectively avoid taking harder, unpopular decisions, such as limiting consumption, either with tighter caps on emissions or higher taxes. They effectively push the problem of dealing with environmental damage on to the shoulders of the poor.”
3 Responses to “The back of the palm: biofuel disaster in the making”
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Phoenix Woman said
The big irony is that switchgrass beats all of the other biofuels and is a lot easier to grow, as it’s technically a weed.
My own vision is of an urban/suburban (closer to the customers = less transmission loss) switchgrass prairie dotted with wind turbines that have photovoltaic cells installed on every suitable surface. Why not use all the technologies together?
Charles said
Why not, indeed?
Phoenix Woman said
Especially since ultra-thin PV strips are now on the market. Install it on your conventional car’s dashboard and you could power your car radio or A/C and even use it to recharge your battery, and save a bit of gas thereby.