Mar

6

Planting oil or greasing palms?

March 6, 2006 | 2 Comments

Oil palmTHIS morning I woke up to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in The Guardian. On the surface this article by the president of Brazil seems a bright dot of hope, despite its sales pitch. Twenty percent of the Earth’s fresh water ripples in the Amazon region, he tells us, and some two thirds of the country is still wearing the vegetation it was born with. Over the next decade, 13 million hectars of Amazonian rainforest is going to be put “under a management regime” to guarantee regeneration. (Reading this, I fought visions of tree armies being put through their reproductive paces by drill sergeants.)

But it was the bit about ethanol that made me sit up. Brazil has it, and everybody wants some. This Latin American country, the fifth largest in the world, has the biggest sugar cane crop on Earth. Ethanol is produced from sugar cane through distillation, and is one of the cheapest, cleanest and most dependable types of fuel derived from renewable resources. It is most commonly used to increase octane and improve the emissions quality of gasoline. According to Da Silva, three quarters of Brazilian cars have flex-fuel engines, which run on either ethanol or petrol or a mix of the two.

The drive for renewable resources in Brazil goes further still with the biodiesel project, in which oils from oil-bearing plants are combined with alcohol in the presence of a catalyst. The resulting product can be blended with fossil diesel fuel, or used as a neat fuel — a biodiesel. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva concludes his article with the words:

…we are determined to “plant the oil of the future”. I invite you to join us in our endeavours.

A century late, but moving fast

Biodiesel has been around since about 1853, and ironically the man whose name became synonymous with the fossil fuel engine, used biofuel derived from peanut oil to run his engine prototype. A visionary, Rudolf Diesel pointed out in a 1912 speech that although the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels was not yet seen as significant,

such oils may become … as important as petroleum and the coal-tar products of the present time.

Willie NelsonAwareness of the value of this fuel is growing, and that opens up a whole box of troubles. The use of biodiesel is growing from Bangkok to Texas, the latter partly through the efforts of entertainer Willie Nelson. By the end of last year his BioWillie biodiesel was already available at 13 gas stations and truck stops, most of them in the home state of Texaco oil company. Shotgun Willie uses his brand in all his tour and personal vehicles.

Last month the US Environmental Protection Agency named the Biodiesel Production Facility in Denton, Texas, as its Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) Project of the Year (Alternative Fuel). The same month, the Washington State House of Representatives passed a renewable fuel standard (House Bill 2738) that

mandates 2% minimum annual sales of biodiesel within that state, and a minimum 2% ethanol content for all gasoline sold in the state.

The bio bandwagon

In India biodiesel is replacing kerosene to power rickshaws, and in Germany one in 10 public gas stations offers the bio alternative, priced cheaper than its fossil counterpart. In Canada, biodiesel is present and correct from Quebec to British Colombia, and Canadian farmers make their own, thanks to low cost mini biodiesel plants.

biodiesel11.jpgThe trend doesn’t end there: Norway, France, the Czech republic, Finland, Australia, Belgium, the UK, Alaska and others are all on the bio bandwagon. And those countries not yet on it are running to catch up. This year Sasol, the South African energy company and world’s largest Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) producer, and the Central Energy Fund (CEF) are conducting a feasibility study for a biodiesel plant in the country.

It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Government and industry take on the challenge of saving our planet. It seems as if we are surfacing from our self-satisfied slumber to the wake-up call that depleted really means gone for good. No more cookies in the jar, no more coal in the scuttle. And this magical biofuel stuff seems to be the answer. But are we exchanging one evil for another simply because we have no concept of cutting back? Or rather, we understand the concept, but if it doesn’t affect us in our lifetime, who gives a damn? I’m all right, Jack.

Counting carbons

George Monbiot has some stern cautions. Investigative reporter, bestselling author and a survivor of shipwreck, militia and academia, Monbiot is a Global Justice campaigner. And he offers some unpalatable food for thought in his December 6, 2005 The Guardian article. The picture he paints is alarming at best. European demand for biodiesel growing, and the EU is getting much of it from Malaysian palm oil. Why? It’s the cheapest in the world. Rather than being conserved, forestland is being converted to palm farms. Monboit quotes these staggering figures:

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.

Monbiot goes on to point out that the destruction of the natural habitat of the orang-utan, Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, and proboscis monkeys won’t just threaten these species, but thousands of others as well. The process of deforestation and preparation for palm farms, he says, is “more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.”

http://www.cockroachproductions.blogspot.com/Why? Trees use up carbon dioxide in the air and give us back oxygen. When tracts of land are cleared, the forest trees are felled and burned. Much bigger than the palms that will replace them, the burning trees release a vast store of carbon. Living trees that would have “cleaned” our air are instead made to pollute it with the very gas they would have converted to oxygen.

It gets worse, Monbiot tells us. With so much of the dry land already in use, palm farmers are looking to swamp forests for new land. As those trees (growing on peat) are cleared and the ground drained, the drying peat oxidizes — and produces more carbon dioxide than the burning trees. Fabulous. We have a talent for turning a good solution into an industry that wreaks as much damage as the problem it addresses. Up the human race.

What’s to be done?

Friends of the Earth offers a summary of the problem and suggest what actions can be taken. These involve challenging the UK government, the EU, companies and consumers to use sustainable sources of palm oil, adhere to human rights and labour conditions, and to put checks and balances in place so that we don’t end up depleting yet another resource, and making developing countries dependent on income from biodiesel and related industries. Their recommendations go into far more detail than what’s written above, and require effort (writing letters, raising awareness, implementing legislation, changing shopping habits) for real change to happen.

Orangutan-Friendly Palm OilPetroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes explores the maths behind the world’s finite supply of oil and touches on other alternatives like nuclear power in his books Hubbert’s Peak : The Impending World Oil Shortage and Beyond Oil : The View from Hubbert’s Peak. He is not alone in giving us due warning: authors and publications abound. But even more important and urgently needed are good thinktanks, research studies and guides about energy alternatives. Books like William Kemp’s The Renewable Energy Handbook : A Guide to Rural Energy Independence, Off-Grid and Sustainable Living. But the solutions and responsibilities lie with all of us.

The one thing we can do every day is dead simple: cut down on consumption. Of everything. No one has to live a puritanical life. But in richer countries we eat too much, smoke ourselves to death, pickle our livers and drink so much caffeine in various forms that its withdrawal symptoms are well documented. We drive where we could walk, we buy new where sometimes we can mend. We pull down instead of restoring and we recycle half-heartedly. We are greedy and bone lazy. And we wonder why our health is suffering?

So look at it like this: even if you can’t get off your arse to save the planet, at least you can protect your body against the diseases related to an unhealthy lifestyle. As an astounding side effect, you will actually be using fewer resources. And then as you look at your new trimmer figure in the mirror, you can pat yourself on the back for more than one form of progress.

We just need to pace ourselves with the planet. Surely we can do that.

image credits

Willie Nelson from his site for BioWillie Diesel
Nick Lyon for Oil Palm, Palm Oil Plantation and Orangutan-Friendly Palm Oil Logo.
(More on conservation from his Cockroach Productions blog)
Robseattle for Biodiesel Sample Bottles

See also

b radical: Tickets for the gas-guzzlers
b snaps: Earth Day


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. b on May 16, 2006 9:47 am

    Updated with additional links today

  2. Earth Day : frmb2u on April 24, 2007 1:09 am

    [...] Planting oil or greasing palms? b radical: b’s guide to Armchair Activism Fly me to the moon [...]

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