Joined: Oct 22, 2005 Posts: 709 Location: European Capital of Kulcha 2008
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 6:47 am Post subject: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
The UK 'Guardian' newspaper columnist George Monbiot, reassesses the pros and cons of biodiesel as a replacement for dwindling conventional oil supplies.
Worse Than Fossil Fuel
Filed under: climate change oil
Biodiesel enthusiasts have accidentally invented the most carbon-intensive fuel on earth
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005
Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.
In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota.”(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals.
The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy – and the extraordinary power densities it gives us – with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states – such as ours – which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they’re not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel’s destructive impact.
Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are perfoming a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet one 380th of our demand for road transport fuel(2). Beyond that, the trouble begins.
When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world’s most carbon-intensive fuel.
In promoting biodiesel – as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do – you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.
Last week, the chairman of Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia – one German, one American – are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.
“The demand for biodiesel,” the Malaysian Star reports, “will come from the European Community … This fresh demand … would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia’s crude palm oil inventories”(7). Why? Because it’s cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.
In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. “Between 1985 and 2000,” it found, “the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia”(. In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.
Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.
Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they’ve cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.
The British government understands this. In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that “the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations).”(10) It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: “mandatory environmental criteria … would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole”(11). So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for “some form of voluntary scheme” instead(12). Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelarate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway.
At other times it happily defies the European Union. But what the EU wants and what the government wants are the same. “It is essential that we balance the increasing demand for travel,” the government’s report says, “with our goals for protecting the environment”(13). Until recently, we had a policy of reducing the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises. Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6 billion – more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme(14). Instead of attempting to reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the South East Asian rainforests in order to be seen to do something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.
All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:26 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
It's nice to see at least someone is living in reality, great article.
I honestly can't believe people are even considering cutting down forests to plant F**king biodiesel! It really concerns me. _________________ "One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me, and I discovered that my castle stands upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand."
Joined: May 26, 2004 Posts: 1191 Location: Zoorope
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:57 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Thinking that they'd plant palms in deserts is just another example of our endlessy stupid faith on govts/corps. _________________ **no english mothertongue**
--------
Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:27 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
i think biodiesel gets worse
after the land has been burnt up and biofuel plants have been grown etc ... After a few years of this the soil is going to be useless. It will probably require massive fertiliser inputs, otherwise it could turn to dessert.
Not only that some governments want to heavily sibsidise biofuel production. Which could mean they are using more energy inputs than they finally output.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:35 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Good point indeed. It is simply not possible to power our gloabl industries, aircrafts, x-boxes, and cars through any sort of crop without destroying indigenous vegitation.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:44 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Quote:
i think biodiesel gets worse
after the land has been burnt up and biofuel plants have been grown etc ... After a few years of this the soil is going to be useless. It will probably require massive fertiliser inputs, otherwise it could turn to dessert.
Not only that some governments want to heavily sibsidise biofuel production. Which could mean they are using more energy inputs than they finally output.
Well, first cars destroyed communities in the countries where people own cars, and now they destroy communities for poor people who can not afford cars. - Remember, it is for fueling cars, trucks and air transport that most oil - i.e. petroleum - is used. But if the last sentence is true, that also palm oil uses more energy input than will be produced, it will stop when petroleum runs out - but unfortunately not until the tropical forests have been destroyed.
After I learned the problems of palm oil a few years ago, and that it is a main ingredience in margarine, my household now uses only organic butter, even for cookies and such, and some vegetable oils like sun flower and rape seed that is grown in temperate areas. But the amounts used for driving cars are immensely larger than anybody uses for food - although we can not cut down on that because we do not own a car.
Joined: Aug 11, 2005 Posts: 736 Location: Eastern NC
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:58 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
You do understand that this means Bush not signing the Kyoto accords was an enviromental step. The rule of unintented consequensces strikes again. Perhaps better to plod along with our usual petrobased world until we figure things out, or we're screwed regardless and the EU will completely gring to a halt in it's self inflicted hand wringing. That would certainly lead to demand destruction.
Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 1203 Location: Left the cult
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 9:26 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
By coincidence, the new mammal found in Borneo is already under threat from logging and palm oil plantations (BBC).
It looks like the future of the Earth is a giant farm, with wildlife confined to "nature theme parks" where a selection of cute animals will be kept in a pastiche of their former habitat, existing largely for our entertainment.
BBC again:
Quote:
An idea to ensure tourists visiting wildlife parks catch a glimpse of the animals they came to see has been proposed at an environmental conference in Malaysia.
Bernard Harrison, a zoo manager and designer, suggested the construction of "managed wildlife sanctuaries" on degraded land would allow people to enjoy what he called "orchestrated random encounters".
Oh well, you can't stand in the way of progress! _________________ It's all downhill from here
Joined: Aug 17, 2005 Posts: 581 Location: Portugal
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:09 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Competition between fuel and food is as inevitable as human greed...
But biodiesel is not a bad thing. It's necessary for many applications. As long as it's not squandered in private transportation, it's a step to solve the post-peak problems.
The catch is.. governments will have to be strong enough to keep biodiesel crops within acceptable boundaries. Will they be able? Right now I doubt it.
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:15 am Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Someone has to be the devil's advocate here.
1. Why are people creating monster mega palm plantations? Because there is a huge demand for palm oil from the wealthy west.
2. Why would poor farmers not jump on this opportunity? It's their chance of a life-time. Go to Central Africa, ask any person there if he values immediate cash more than concepts like sustainability, environmental protection, global warming or carbon sinks. You will get the idea.
3. If we want to prevent this from happening, we should stop all demand for cheap biofuels at once. If we don't do this, I prefer to blame ourselves, instead of the poor African or SEAsian smallholder who destroys forest in order to survive on a steady cash income which gives him some certainty.
4. We should be working on methods of compensating these poor agroforesters: how many billions are we prepared to put up to save these rainforests? We should put our money where our mouth is.
5. A quick note: new methods of "green accounting" or "ecosystem valuations" are being crafted; with these, one can prove, in an abstract sense, that tropical rainforests have a clear value as ecosystems that can be expressed in hard €uro terms. This value is greater than if you were to use the forest for direct commercial exploitation.
Now the problem with these abstract valuations is that they assume the universality of noble modernistic concepts such as "sustainability", "benefits for mankind", etc... Sadly, Reality tells us these concepts are far from being universally shared. To the poor subsistence farmer in Indonesia or Congo, they mean nothing. In his case, it's either him or the tree.
So unless we are prepared to put billions (better: trillions) of dollars into crash development programs, today, not tomorrow, with which we can lift these farmers out of poverty so that they don't have to make this disastrous (but logical) choice, then we are collectively f*kkd.
In short, we should give poor farmers in tropical countries clear reasons and financial incentives to make sure they don't raze down forests. I say: we will fail to do so.
Joined: Oct 18, 2004 Posts: 1954 Location: kiwibush
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:01 pm Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
lorenzo wrote:
In short, we should give poor farmers in tropical countries clear reasons and financial incentives to make sure they don't raze down forests. I say: we will fail to do so.
Pass me the pipe...I need another smoke man! _________________ Bugger me, I hear oil's runnin out mate!
Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:48 pm Post subject: Re: Monbiot Gives Biodiesel A Kicking
Huzzah for Monbiot!!! _________________ "The world is changed... I feel it in the water... I feel it in the earth... I smell it in the air... Much that once was, is lost..." - Galadriel
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. In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.
