Bishop Hill More green trashing of the environment
Also in the Telegraph, a survey of the effects of jatropha, a crop that has been pushed hard as the answer to the biofuel problem.
Jatropha has been planted across Asia in countries under pressure from the West to reduce emissions from the destruction of rainforests, car exhausts and energy production from coal-burning power plants.
But the study for the anti-poverty agency ActionAid and the RSPB of a proposed 50,000 hectare jatropha plantation development in the Dakatcha woodlands of Kenya, near Malindi, found that emissions in producing the biofuel would be 2.5 to six times higher than the fossil fuel equivalents. The woodland hosts globally endangered bird life.
A couple of years ago, as food prices soared in response to farmers diverting land to biofuels, it was argued that so-called "second generation biofuels", including jatropha, would provide an answer, because they used marginal land not required for food production.
Back to the drawing board then...
Reader Comments (8)
...except that the Green/Left doesn't <I>have a drawing board -- their policies are based solely on emotion, i.e. what feels good as a solution. That is a very poor basis for decision-making, which is why the vast majority of their solutions end up doing more damage than the problem they were trying to solve.
Put another way, their solutions are moralistic (what sounds and feels fair and inclusive) rather than moral (that which actually benefits people).
I would not trust the word of ActionAid or the RSPB. Is there an independent study?
The Greens now seem to be parroting the US military in Vietnam, when after the destruction of Ben Tre an American major infamously said, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
Trashing the planet in order to save it seems to be the only catastrope awaiting humanity. Our pacifism, our subservience to environmentalism really has to end.
It isn't biofuels which are to blame.
It's the Green bioFOOLS.
But more fool the rest of us for listening to them. We should have learned by now.
Well, the Greens would rather have a thrashed planet, so they can keep on with their blame game, than look for viable solutions since these tend to conflict with their ideology ...
A huge and often overlooked downside to growing Jatropha as a biofuel is that it is highly toxic. A Green argument that I've come across favouring the use of Jatropha in this context is that it's less of a moral *outrage* to make fuel out of a non-food crop than an edible one. However, in a starvation situation you have no fallback whatsoever - at least with maize or palm oil commodity flows can be redirected into the food chain. Maybe there's a dilemma here between intended/unintended consequences given the dark green attitude to population control?
SNTF
Given the green anti-GM, anti-efficiency bias in agricultural techniques embraced by a poster on the 'unintended consequences' thread it's probably just emoting vs rationality.
I mean you're not suggesting that they actually want to kill us are you? Surely the deaths that will occur as a result of biofuels and advocacy-retarded efficiency gains will be classed as 'accidental'? Or 'unintended consequences'?
It seems no one in the USA plants jatropa anywhere. Should be lots of marginal laces in the desert SW that it could survive, where other food crop wouldn't.
Shouldn't the greens in the US practice as they preach?