George Monbiot argues in the Guardian today (here) that we need a massive campaign against all targets and inventives for biofuels....
Two facts in the article particularly struck me:
- A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces.
- The UN has just reassessed the assertion it made in 2002 that said that 98% of Indonesian rain forest will have disappeared by 2032, now saying this will be reached by 2022.
Therefore, in short, our biofuel incentives are not only leading to increased emissions but also causing the type of land use change that is causing the greatest losses of biodiversity. My comments here are very relevant to this.
The problems of the current biofuel "boom" stem largely from the fact that most biofuels are made from crops that are grown for people to eat rather than from the waste plant matter. Wheat, for example, has been selected over the last 10,000 years to have palatable and nutritious seeds, which we harvest leaving most of the plant behind. The logic of using these few seeds to make fuel, while burning, or rotting the waste seems to be absurd.
We desperately need the new wave of biofuel technology to make energy from cellulose, and other waste plant materials. This article discusses how to resolve the food/fuel debate, but it requires massive new processing plants and technologies, as well as enormous changes in the way we farm. These changes will take time, but without them incentives to biofuel production and use will do little but speed up the degradation of some of the world's most biologically important habitats, and add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
