I've just come across this - a NASA satellite image measuring carbon monoxide to show smoke from over 70,000 fires across South America during September 2007. I've pinched the photo from the Biofuelwatch website as this issue is just not getting enough air time. Here is what they write:
"Reports suggest that 2007 has been one of the worst years on record for fires in large parts of South America, including in the Brazilian Amazon, Paraguay, Bolivia and northern Argentina. The biofuel boom is raising commodity prices and large landowners have been burning forest to clear more land for soya. Brazil's sugar ethanol expansion is putting further pressures on the Amazon, too, primarily because it displaces cattle ranching and other agricultural activities elsewhere and pushes them into the rainforest. Recurrent drought in large parts of South America suggests that, due to deforestation, the Amazon forest may be close to the point where it can no longer maintain the rainfall cycle on which it depends, in which case much or all of the rainforest could die back and large parts of the Americas could dry up."
Infact some are nick-naming biofuels as 'deforestation diesel' - deforestation is itself one of the biggest causes of CO2 - all this is giving the reused biofuels - the chip fat - a bad name as one biofuel is much the same as another to the average punter - check them up before you purshase. See also the 'Label' below for previous blogs on this topic.
2 comments:
Is Soya really used for biofuel, or to feed the cattle, pigs and chickens in their factory farms around the world? Trees are a much better source of biofuels, apparently.
Most of the rain forests, at least in South East Asia, are being cleared for growing palm oil, which mainly gets used for making things we buy in the supermarkets. Things like soap, detergents, crisps, cooking oil and so on.
While the biofuel people are trying to create sustainable forms of energy, it the old food industries who are more to blame for deforestation.
Even the biofuelwatch people on their site mention the food aspect. I am told, by a professional, that only avery small percentage of palm oil is going into biofuel (an dit is not very efficent either)... so maybe a bit of care is needed in looking at this issue.
Agree this is an area that needs much care - Soya is indeed being used as biofuels - President Lula of Brazil where the use of Soya has been expanding is quoted saying biofuel "is significantly less polluting than conventional petroleum-based diesel".
But while Brazil is set to produce most of its biodiesel from soya beans, it should be noted that they have virtually no advantage over conventional fuels in terms of overall greenhouse gas emissions, let alone the millions of hectares of tropical forest that have been cleared for large-scale soya plantations.
It is clear that automatically classifying biofuels as renewable energy regardless of how they are produced is dangerous. We cannot afford to address climate change while creating another environmental problem, deforestation.
As Giulio Volpi, coordinator of the WWF's climate change programme for Latin America and the Caribbean wrote: "The world must promote only those biofuels which offer the greatest environmental benefit, such as sustainably produced forest and wood products in temperate countries, and sugar-based bioethanol in tropical ones. A mandatory eco-certification scheme for biofuels must be established, applying to all biofuels regardless of where they are produced. This system must be based on environmental and social criteria, and be easy to apply and flexible enough to meet local conditions. In Portuguese we have an expression which sums this up: BiocombustÃveis sim, mas não de qualquer jeito! This means: yes to development but not to any development, yes to biofuels but not to any biofuels!"
I have so far been unable to find out how much biofuel comes from what source - there seems to be alot of differing info out there - can anyone help?
Certainly all the evidence is that more palm oil wll go to biofuels - and that is what seems to be driving more deforestation - see Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/apr/04/energy.indonesia
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