Vēl viens rakstiņš par videi nedraudzīgo biodegvielu

"Anne Petermann, Co-Director of the Global Justice Ecology Project, is in Bali for the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She believes that the biofuel boom, even ‘second generation’ fuels, are adding to the pressure on the environment, resulting in further deforestation, increased chemical use and loss of ecosystems - in the name of profit. Petermann explains:
‘Indigenous peoples and non-governmental organizations have come to Bali, Indonesia for the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC hoping to infuse some common sense into an otherwise obscene process that prioritises corporate profit over human rights, forest protection or even meaningful action to halt global warming.
Many of these groups took to the streets on 8 December in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia for the international day of action against climate change. . .They were joined by groups all over the world in demanding that real and immediate action be taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by the scientist-recommended 60-80 per cent that is needed to stop further warming of the planet.
Corporations, on the other hand, are moving ahead with schemes to use rising public concern about global warming as a means to accelerate profit-making. One of the most prominent of these schemes is large-scale production of biofuels. In the past 2 years, a corporate biofuels feeding frenzy has begun.
Food for Fuel
Dramatic rises in the price of important food sources such as corn, however, have raised concerns about the human cost of producing fuel from food. One study revealed that the amount of grain required to fill the tank of a single sport utility vehicle or SUV could feed one person for an entire year. Other studies have exposed the poor energy return of biofuel crops, some of which require more total energy to produce than is derived from the fuel that is created. These serious problems with biofuels have led groups to re-name them ‘agro fuels’ which reflects the corporate emphasis of large-scale monocultures of crops as biofuel feedstocks.
The public backlash against food-based fuel has led to industry and governments focusing more investment into so-called ‘second generation’ agrofuels that are manufactured out of inedible cellulose-based feedstocks such as corn stalks, trees or switchgrass.
Industry argues that because these feedstocks are not edible, their use ends the fears of agrofuels competing with food. However, as the demand for biofuels increases and the price for the feedstocks climbs higher, agribusiness and farmers will shift their agricultural production into those crops with higher profit returns—whether they are crops of switchgrass or eucalyptus. Biofuel crops will continue to compete with food crops for available land. Further concerns have been raised about switchgrass due to its invasive nature—conservationists fear that widespread use of switchgrass will lead to its escape into native ecosystems and the displacement of indigenous plants and wildlife.
Use of corn stalks for ethanol is posed as a win-win. The corn is harvested and the corn stalks used to produce ethanol—no competition for food. These corn crop residues, however, are critical to the soil structure. Stripping every last bit of plant from the land leaves nothing for the soil. This in turn requires more chemical inputs for future crops, with many of the chemical inputs—fertilizers and pesticides—being petroleum-based.
Others are researching production of ethanol from wood, including development of trees specifically genetically engineered to produce agrofuels.
Deforestation contributes roughly 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually and it does not take a genius to understand that manufacturing fuel from wood is not a great strategy if reducing deforestation is one of your goals. Ironically, however, that is exactly what is occurring at the UN climate change convention in Bali. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries, known as REDD, is on the top of the agenda at this year’s Conference of the Parties. At the same time, agrofuels are being heavily promoted there.
Existing agrofuel monoculture plantations of soy and oil palm have already been documented as destroying important forests. Oil palm expansion in Indonesia has already caused massive destruction of the nation’s peat forests—which are critical carbon sinks. The logging and burning of these peat forests has in fact contributed to Indonesia being the world’s third largest emitter of carbon. Brazil was actually experiencing a drop in deforestation before the biofuels boom. But now soy expansion in Brazil, partly for biodiesel, has greatly accelerated deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
The new emphasis on cellulosic ethanol from wood threatens to massively increase the logging of the world’s remaining native forests with tremendous repercussions for forest-dependent peoples and biodiversity.
In the US, the Southeast region of the country has become the world’s leading supplier of pulp for paper, with one in five forested acres converted to loblolly pine plantations. The rising prominence of biofuels, however, has companies looking at these same pine plantations to feed future cellulosic ethanol mills. The US State of Georgia has stated that they want to be the ‘biofuels Saudi Arabia’ using their pine plantations as the feedstock.
The diversion of this timber from paper pulp to biofuels, without an attendant drop in paper consumption, will push demand for paper pulp elsewhere resulting in accelerated conversion of native forests into monoculture tree plantations, as well as increased legal and illegal logging of forests. Once again, indigenous communities find themselves threatened by the extraction of resources for Northern consumption.
Not Natural
Industry’s other scheme for cellulosic ethanol from wood involves genetically engineering trees to make them more easily digested into ethanol. These ‘low lignin’ trees, however, come with a high price. Genetic engineering is a revolutionary technology, and the use of it on a being as complex and long-lived as a tree is a risky endeavor. There is no way to know the long term consequences. The commercial release of genetically engineered (GE) trees into the environment will inevitably result in the escape of GE tree seeds or pollen into native ecosystems up to hundreds of kilometers away. Escaped GE trees can then go on to contaminate more trees and ecosystems in an endless and irreversible cycle. In the case of GE low-lignin trees, known impacts include a reduced ability to sequester carbon in the soils and, when they die, more rapid decomposition and carbon release. Development of huge plantations of GE low-lignin trees, therefore, is clearly not a great strategy for reducing carbon emissions. The impacts on biodiversity or local communities is largely unknown.
Because these trees are low in lignin, which is the structural part of a tree that protects it against disease, insects, and environmental stresses like cold and wind, low-lignin trees may also be engineered for traits such as disease or insect resistance, which greatly magnifies the harmful impacts these trees have on native biodiversity and ecosystems.
To conclude, second-generation agrofuels do not solve the problems posed by current agrofuel technologies. In fact, they continue to compete with food, they accelerate deforestation and displacement of forest-dependent communities, and they threaten to open a Pandora’s Box of potential impacts in the form of genetically engineered trees.
The first and most obvious step in solving the global warming crisis is a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at their source in the industrialized countries of the North. Deforestation and conversion of forests to plantations must be halted, accompanied by a dramatic drop in consumption of wood-based products.
Additionally, the application of appropriate technologies on a small, local, sustainable scale is critical. The solution to global warming will come in thousands of different forms, specific to various cultures and regions. This is the message of the peoples from around the world who came to Bali, Indonesia to fight for action on global warming."

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