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We need to be really dramatic and big about how we challenge biofuels
to shake people out of complacent thinking. If we are too polite and
reasonable, readers on the fence will have a tendency to view the
conversation as a friendly disagreement between two, nearly equal,
valid positions; some sort of judgment call.<br>
<br>
We must get people to understand that biofuels are a critical
emergency, and we are not going to accomplish that with tamed down
words.<br>
<br>
cheers<br>
<br>
Eric<br>
<br>
Don Eichelberger wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:200711281821.adc474df80377@rly-db08.mx.aol.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Context-Type"
content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
Eric-<br>
<br>
Great article, overall. Had some problem with some of the rhetoric
which left a vague sense of overstatement. I know it is not an
overstatement, and that is the rub. <br>
<br>
But expressions like, "blindly hooked on a devastating, diseased,
biofuels illusion...(a)nd unwitting starry eyed supporters of it like
Willie Nelson and E. "Doc" Smith are the keystone... writes a
smarmy smiling article...."<br>
<br>
are a bit of a turn-off to me, and i believe, to some of the public,
mostly those who do not want to hear the truth, anyway.<br>
<br>
But I can definitely relate to the frustration, and it is mostly a
great
article.<br>
<br>
Definitely worth the read,<br>
<br>
Don<br>
<br>
At 08:26 AM 11/26/2007, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="">Hi all,<br>
<br>
I got a good guest editorial spot for a piece I wrote strongly
criticising biodiesel and the agro-fuels industry.<br>
<br>
See below or: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Guest_Editorial_The_Terrible_Illusion_of_Biodiesel_5133.html">http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Guest_Editorial_The_Terrible_Illusion_of_Biodiesel_5133.html</a>
<br>
<br>
<h2><b>Guest Editorial: The Terrible Illusion of
Biodiesel</b></h2>
<br>
<br>
<i>by Eric Brooks, 2007-11-26<br>
</i>I read with shocked and tired eyes E. "Doc" Smith's recent <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5132">glowing
article</a> about San Francisco's biodiesel program. As an
environmental
activist with over two decades experience, every time I see an article
like this, I lose another little bit of precious life and hope.<br>
<br>
Smith and others like him, trumpeting the valor of biodiesel and other
biofuels, need to knock it off immediately. Biodiesel does -not-
produce
fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum diesel, in fact it
produces
more. And the reality gets even worse than that. Biodiesel and other
biofuels have suddenly become a huge booming industry which, because of
the the nature of how those fuels are produced, is now destroying the
planet and human civilization much faster than global warming. <br>
<br>
This needs to be repeated... The new biofuels boom is -worse- than
global
warming. And unwitting starry eyed supporters of it like Willie Nelson
and E. "Doc" Smith are the keystone that is helping massive
multi-national corporations get the planet's increasingly
environmentally
conscious public to become blindly hooked on a devastating, diseased,
biofuels illusion.<br>
<br>
Those of us on the cutting edge of fighting the climate crisis have
been
struggling mightily to get people to wake up from this illusion for the
last decade and we are beginning to get attention; but not nearly fast
enough to stop corporations like ADM, Cargill, British Petroleum (BP),
Monsanto, and many others from ramping up a massive explosion in
biofuels, bioplastics, and biochemicals production which is already
visibly and measurably increasing our already serious global
environmental collapse at an almost exponential rate.<br>
<br>
The key problem of perception is french fry oil. When told of how some
people are now running their cars on used vegetable oils that would
have
been thrown away, environmentally conscious people immediately get very
excited by the idea. I myself long ago, got very excited about it. But
then I started thinking about all of the work that the environmental
movement has done to fight corporate monoculture agriculture's
devastating impact on the the planet. I started to crunch numbers in my
head, and I immediately realized that biofuels could not possibly be a
good thing, and that soon they would present the worst environmental
disaster we have ever faced. That grim realization is now becoming a
reality.<br>
<br>
The problem is one of sheer scale. The amount of fuel that can be
produced from recycling used cooking oil is only a tiny fraction of the
total fuel used every day by diesel automobiles. What this means is
that
projects like San Francisco's waste oils biodiesel program will quickly
run out of those waste oils long before even a small part of San
Francisco's fleet of diesel cars, trucks and construction equipment is
converted to biodiesel. At that point there is only one place to get
the
supposedly magical biodiesel; from massive corporate plantations of
monocrops grown specifically to produce biodiesel.<br>
<br>
In fact, because of European requirements for biofuel use, this is
already happening. As you read this article, huge amounts of both
rainforest, and food crop land, are being cleared in order to produce
automobile fuel crops, most prominently, biodiesel from palm oil. The
impact is already staggering and is getting worse very rapidly. And as
rainforest and cropland are being destroyed, some grain food prices are
skyrocketing both because food crops have been replaced by fuel crops
and
because many former food crops themselves are being used to produce
fuel
-instead- of food.<br>
<br>
This process is devastating the global ecosystem and economies in the
global South; the latter which are already staggering under the
terrible
weight of a global agriculture industry that is eating up lands which
once produced local food, in order to grow and sell to the world
market,
higher priced export crops. Take one look at the world's insane love of
the automobile, and at the booming production of new automobiles for
countries like China, and it is easy to see that biofuels are the
-ultimate- export crop; which will form the foundation of a planet and
civilization killing industry, if we allow their production to proceed
any further.<br>
<br>
And as this cropland and rainforest clearing rages forward, the
process,
because it is accompanied by realities like top soil disturbance (which
releases CO2) and the burning of undesirable trees and plant wastes, is
creating massively higher CO2 releases than even petroleum products
produce. For example, biodiesel made from palm oil produces -ten- times
more global warming gasses than petroleum diesel.<br>
<br>
To complete the grim cycle, every time someone like Smith, however
noble
and well intentioned, writes a smarmy smiling article about how great
and
progressive biofuel is, the big ag companies go to Congresses and
Parliaments all over the world with an even further gleefully deceived
public as back-up, to get increased subsidies for this new devastating
biofuels industry.<br>
<br>
And biofuel is just the beginning. These companies are now branching
out
into bioplastics, biochemicals, and biopharmaceuticals. Companies like
BP
(with its new 500 million dollar labs at UC Berkeley) are literally
making plans to manufacture everything we produce now from petroleum
and
natural gas, from plant crops instead. The result of such nonsense is
easily predictable - a much more rapid planetary collapse which will be
completed in our own lifetimes.<br>
<br>
This insanity must be stopped immediately, and the first step is to
stop
painting glowing images of biofuels and start painting the accurate,
Bosch like nightmare panorama, of biofuels as a disaster, which is now
eating our planet alive, faster than global warming.<br>
<br>
To start getting a sense of the nature and scale of this problem, I
recommend reading a couple of articles by science writer and
environmental activist George Monbiot at, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/">http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/</a>
and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/">http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/</a>
<br>
<i><br>
Eric Brooks is Co-Chair of the San Francisco Green Party Sustainability
Working Group.</i> <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre>--
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate
themselves." – Che
Guevara</pre>
_______________________________________________<br>
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</blockquote>
<p><br>
Don Eichelberger<br>
DJ Fix Independent Productions<br>
<br>
Green Uprising Blog<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.greenuprising.blogspot.com/">www.greenuprising.blogspot.com<br>
<br>
</a>My You Tube<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctRp5rGJoUc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctRp5rGJoUc<br>
</a><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iySwwyZfDgE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iySwwyZfDgE<br>
</a><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r9rK8nPREA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r9rK8nPREA<br>
</a><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5UbnJ0kUqo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5UbnJ0kUqo<br>
</a><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SktIYTyC1U">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SktIYTyC1U<br>
<br>
</a>Donny Fix del.icio.us book marks<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://del.icio.us/donnyfix">http://del.icio.us/donnyfix<br>
<br>
</a>The Hegelian/Marxist goal is emancipation. Marx said it best in
1843:<br>
<br>
"Human emancipation wll only be complete when the real, individual
man (sic) is absorbed into himself the abstract citizen; when as an
individual man, in his every day life, in his work and in his
relationships, he has become a <i>species-being</i> (<b>politically
accountabe to the whole</b>); and when he recognizes and realizes his
own
power as <i>social</i> powers, so that he no longer separates this <i>socia</i>l
power from himself as <i>political </i>power."<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara</pre>
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