[Marxism] Worse Than Fossil Fuel

[Joonas Laine <jjonas@xxxxxx>]

a good article on why a drastic reduction in energy consumption is of
utmost importance, no matter how the energy is generated (reneweables or
whatever)

...

Worse Than Fossil Fuel
By George Monbiot
08 December, 2005
The Guardian

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 x 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"(8). 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.
www.monbiot.com

-- 
jjonas @ nic.fi


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