|
|
Blog Feeds
Anti-Empire
The SakerA bird's eye view of the vineyard
Public InquiryInterested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
Human Rights in IrelandIndymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
|
The Reality Of 'Biofuels' international |
environment |
other press
 Tuesday July 24, 2007 15:37 by wolfie
 The real cost of biofuels on the environment and workers Biofuels have been touted as the way to go facing fossil fuel shortages and global warming.The reality is that they are leading to higher food prices for the worlds poor and to degradation of the environment. Biofuels are big in Brazil. The country aims to become a world leader in ethanol production mainly through processing sugar cane. Throughout the world large acreages of rainforest are being cleared to plant palm oil plantations. The myth that this will aid in the fight against global warming is implicit in the term 'biofuel' Brazilian union members prefer the term 'agrofuel'. In reality more CO2 is released clearing the rainforest and fertilizing the soil than is saved by using the fuel. |
printable version
Digg this
del.icio.us
Furl
Reddit
Technorati
Facebook
Gab
Twitter
|
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (1 of 1)
Jump To Comment: 1Thanks for the article. The conditions are appalling, particularly the requirement for workers to reach a bosses led target before they're paid (12 tons a day in one region, double the 1980 target).
Coupled with the child labour, respiratory problems from emissions from burning and massive pesticide use (the product is not for human consumption so I presume they just drown the stuff in it?) the wages or lack thereof....etc etc it's almost like a version of the Belgian Congo under Leopold.
"According to the sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, the cutters' average lifespan is less than that of colonial slaves.6"
It's not bad enough that at the other side of the equation you have millions of Brazilians going hungry while we drive around in their exported grain and/or use it to feed our cattle in an extremely inefficient and iniquitous relationship. But hey the needs of those without the euros are not counted, right?
And one important point about not knowing where the agrofuel came from. The WTO strictures (trade court rules, pre-eminent over 'quaint' democratic constraints) would prevent the source from being known on the label, and even if it was they would certainly try and prevent attempts at not importing agrofuel from rainforests in Brazil or say palm oil from similar SE Asian forests .
Indeed the way things have gone, the current global market ideology would have prevented the ban in relation to apartheid South Africa. No human or environmental concerns can stand in the way of the undemocratic, neoliberal form of globalisation.
The reality of agrofuel is that it is, quite possibly, the best, most efficient, way to accelerate global warming whilst pretending to prevent it.
From GRAIN,
No to the agrofuel craze!
GRAIN has just published a special issue of Seedling which focuses on biofuels, or as we like to call them, agrofuels - over 30,000 words of indepth analysis from around the world.
In the process of gathering material from colleagues and social movements around the world, we have discovered that the stampede into agrofuels is causing enormous environmental and social damage, much more than we realised earlier. Precious ecosystems are being destroyed and hundreds of thousands of indigenous and peasant communities are being thrown off their land.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=68
http://www.grain.org/front/