tagged w/ Biofuels
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Markets will not solve this. People will and giving indigenous people and local farmers the tools they need. Put a price on carbon and use that money to give it back to consumers. Giving corporations the ability to continue to pollute while pushing people off their land and using climate change as a way to profit (geoengineering is one way) while continuing to pollute will take us nowhere but back.Markets will not solve this. People will and giving indigenous people and local... more
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Algae-derived biofuel -- already powering some planes and helicopters -- offers a cleaner, renewable alternative to petroleum. Will its partisan critics give it a chance to fly?
Last November 7, Continental Airlines Flight 1403 took off from Houston, bound for Chicago. The trip was utterly unremarkable save for one thing. Thanks to its fuel -- a blend of standard jet diesel and a biofuel derived from algae -- the flight reduced carbon dioxide emissions by an amount equivalent to what a car would spew out in 30,000 miles of driving.
In a February speech, President Obama gave a shout-out to the technology that helped make this flight possible. Algae-derived biofuel, he said, was part of a larger national plan to wean us from foreign petroleum while significantly reducing atmospheric carbon levels.
This technology isn't in the blue-sky or even beta-testing stage of the R&D sequence. It has already been proved in the lab, and it's now being proved in the marketplace, where some very big clients -- among them major airlines, the U.S. Navy, and Bunge, one of the world's largest agribusiness conglomerates -- are placing orders for millions of gallons of algae-derived biofuel from dozens of manufacturers.
But that fact wasn't enough to stop a fusillade of cynical rejoinders. The day after the president's speech, Rush Limbaugh couldn't seem to stop using the phrase "pond scum" in his attempt to portray the technology as wacky pseudoscience. One Fox News pundit mocked the notion of finding fuel "in your swimming pool when the pool man's on vacation." Newt Gingrich tried to make the very idea of algal oil into a laugh line, at one point holding up a gas-pump nozzle at a filling-station photo op and proclaiming: "There is no algae that's gonna come out of this, this summer."
The truth is, algae-derived hydrocarbon has been something of a biofuel holy grail for decades now. Scientists have long known that the yucky green film commonly found covering ponds and poorly tended fish tanks can take two of the planet's easiest-to-find ingredients -- light and CO2 -- and turn them into one of the scarcest: oil. And the word renewable doesn't quite do this biofuel feedstock justice: a patch of algae can double in size in a few hours.
The chemical aspects of this conversion are widely understood; the problem, from a commercial standpoint, has always been one of scalability. But innovation is finally catching up to scientists' enthusiasm. A number of companies are figuring out ways to bring the technology up to commercial scale by optimizing growing conditions. The implications -- for our economy and our environment -- could be huge.
"We have literally invented the ability to design oil," says Harrison Dillon, president and chief technology officer of Solazyme, the Bay Area company that sold its biofuel to United Continental Holdings for the Houston-to-Chicago flight last November. Though Dillon and his company's co-founder began Solazyme nine years ago with an eye toward making biofuels alone, they soon discovered that their process -- which involves feeding sugars to genetically optimized algae strains -- allowed them to convert algae into almost any kind of oil, from jet diesel to cooking oil.
As for the technology's bête noire, Dillon thinks his company has overcome the scalability hurdle. "We've been performing this process at commercial scale for close to four years now," he says. "We've delivered almost 200,000 gallons of fuel to the military, which has gone on to power helicopters, landing-craft ships, even a 563-foot destroyer."
Technically, Newt Gingrich was right: algae-derived gasoline won't be coming out of any gas station pumps this summer. But there's no question that this particular biofuel is coming soon to an internal combustion engine near you. Politicians and pundits, regardless of their party affiliation or ideological bent, should be embracing the slime -- not sliming it.Algae-derived biofuel -- already powering some planes and helicopters -- offers a... more
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FUEL is the successor to "Fields of Fuel" which won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary.
FUEL is a must see film. Another real eye opener.
More hope for a better tomorrow.
From Josh Tickell's blog:
We must get real about energy independence at a community level. Invest in solar. Install wind. Make your community energy efficient. Get electric vehicles. Plant a community garden. Support your local farmers. Create incentives for new local green businesses.
Dig in. And dig deep. Because it’s time for America to establish new roots – roots that can support a new perspective in Washington. The answers to our economic crisis are all around us. This is what FUEL is all about. Because after we elect the next president, then we have to do the real work of greening the economy – before it’s too late.FUEL is the successor to "Fields of Fuel" which won the 2008 Sundance Film... more
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3oc
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4 years ago
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Agents of Change risk Liberty and Life on Black-Ops banner action, Infiltrating Royal Mall to Prevent Global Biomassacre - #AgrofuelAction
Activists are furious that the most unsustainable and environmentally damaging form of energy is being branded ‘green’ and wins one of the highest levels of subsidies for power generation. This, activists state diverts venture capital away from true renewables such as wind and solar.
This follows a gathering of about 80 protesters outside DECC (the Department of Energy and Climate Change) called by Biofuelwatch and the Campaign against Climate Change yesterday calling for a complete halt to subsidising bioenergy.
Biomass power station applications are appearing all over the UK as venture capitalists seek to profit from burning biofuels and wood chips.
Activists say that subsidies are not just destroying ecosystems but are driving land grabs at an unprecedented rate. Land previously available for food production is now being taken for energy crops with serious implications for global food poverty. This is because consent on just the current planning applications would require woodchip imports of nearly six times the total UK production, all of which is currently allocated.
Andrew Butler commented that “We’re seeing the start of unjustified payments to burn wood and vegetable oil to produce electricity on an industrial scale, depriving millions of people of the land they need to grow food. We’re also seeing an onslaught on the world’s last great forests exacerbating biodiversity loss and climate change. To cap it all, we’re being forced to pay for this with mandatory surcharges on our energy bills.”Agents of Change risk Liberty and Life on Black-Ops banner action, Infiltrating Royal... more
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UN-accredited companies violently seize land to grow biofuels as part of carbon trading scheme.
23 farmers in Honduras were slaughtered in cold blood by hired mercenaries as they tried to protect their land from being seized by a corporation who wanted to use the land to produce biofuels as part of a United Nations-accredited EU carbon trading scheme.
Obama Buffett
“Protests erupted in July when six international human rights advocacy groups presented a report to the EP detailing what they called murders and forced evictions of peasants in El Bajo Aguán Valley of northern Honduras, ” reports the New American.
“The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) report accuses UN-sanctioned palm oil mills of stealing farmland from Honduran natives and killing or wounding them when they attempt to defend their property. It says the companies, acting with government impunity, regularly target members of local land-rights movements who end up murdered in feigned car accidents or hunted down and shot by private security guards.”
The United Nations’ CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) responded to news of the killings with a collective shrug of the shoulders.
“We are not investigators of crimes,” a board member told EurActiv. “We had to take judgements within our rules – however regretful that may be – and there was not much scope for us to refuse the project. All the consultation procedures precisely had been obeyed.”
The CDM board’s chairman, Martin Hession, also refused to take responsibility and argued that the EU didn’t have the resources to investigate the crimes.
more at link...including original reports.
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Another example of how the "global warming" con is nothing more than a NWO power grab run by banks and fronted by top, Occidental Petroleum shareholder, Al Gore.UN-accredited companies violently seize land to grow biofuels as part of carbon... more
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Soaring food prices caused by ethanol production – funded by Gore – are killing poor black people.
Al Gore is now so desperate to “win the conversation,” or in other words ‘silence the dissent’ surrounding global warming that he is now equating those who question ManBearPig with racists who supported spraying black people with water cannons.
Of course, the delicious irony is the fact that the promotion of man-made global warming and the development of biofuels is killing predominantly black people in third world countries as a result of soaring food prices.
“I remember, again going back to my early years in the South, when the Civil Rights revolution was unfolding, there were two things that really made an impression on me,” Gore told Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky. “My generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators and we went, ‘Whoa! How gross and evil is that?’ My generation asked old people, ‘Explain to me again why it is okay to discriminate against people because their skin color is different?’ And when they couldn’t really answer that question with integrity, the change really started.”
Gore then went on to talk about how to “win the conversation” on global warming, by comparing skeptics with racists, adding “It is important to get that out there, absolutely.”
Gore wants to make man-made climate change skepticism a thought crime on a par with uttering racist obscenities, once again revealing the hardcore authoritarian tendencies that cloud the entire global warming movement.
Since the skeptics are clearly ‘winning the conversation’, with polls showing a decreasing belief in climate change alarmism, merely insinuating skeptics are akin to holocaust deniers by labeling them “climate deniers” is no longer sufficient for the likes of Gore.
In reality, if you want to point the finger at anyone for encouraging racism, it’s overwhelmingly the global warming alarmists themselves.
Climate change alarmism and implementation of global warming policies is a crime of the highest nature, because it is already having a genocidal impact in countries like Haiti, where the doubling of food prices is resulting in a substantial increase in starvation, poverty and death.
As a National Geographic Report confirmed, “With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some must take desperate measures to fill their bellies,” by “eating mud,” partly as a consequence of “increasing global demand for biofuels.”
In April 2008, World Bank President Robert Zoellick admitted that biofuels were a “significant contributor” to soaring food prices that have led to poor people dying from starvation as a result of biofuels dominating land that would normally be used to harvest food.
Even man-made global warming advocate George Monbiot admits that promotion of biofuels “is causing starvation in the poor world,” particularly in Swaziland, where the decision to allocate several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production despite the country being in the grip of a famine was labeled “a crime against humanity” by Jean Ziegler, the UN’s special rapporteur.
Not only are biofuels starving millions of people, they are also leading to environmental destruction, by accelerating the growth of dangerous chemicals and pesticides.
Gore was an enthusiastic supporter of biofuel projects even as it became clear they were exacerbating the starvation of millions of predominantly black people in the third world, and yet he has the temerity to label critics of such practices as “racist”. Part of Gore’s $638 million Generation Investment Management funding was ploughed into the production of biofuels, before Gore himself was forced to admit he was wrong to push biofuels years later, after they had helped kill millions of poor black people.
But it’s not just biofuels, a product of global warming alarmism, that are unleashing a genocide against black people in poorer countries, it’s the whole anti-development mantra embraced by climate change activists that is being enforced by supranational organizations like the World Bank and the IMF in the name of reducing carbon dioxide, the evil life-giving gas that plants breathe and humans exhale.
Indeed, poorer countries rejected the 2009 Copenhagen climate agreement precisely because it discriminated against third world nations.
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 29, 2011
more exposing of this scum at link.Soaring food prices caused by ethanol production – funded by Gore – are... more
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Yeah, we do need to kick the car habit, but it is gonna take time to transition. Yeah, I know we don't have time, but I can't wiggle my nose and make it all better by Monday morning. In the meantime, recyclers are sitting on mountains of cardboard and there is a bacteria that eats cellulose, turning it into butanol, which is a bio fuel.
Our town can't find recyclers to take the cardboard people put in the bin, and we are a very tiny town. They have more than they can deal with and even a small village like where I live is stacking up bales of cardboard. Might this cellulose munching bacteria be a help for the backlog of cardboard that needs to be recycled?Yeah, we do need to kick the car habit, but it is gonna take time to transition. Yeah,... more
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It took nearly 130 years for the world population to grow from 1 to 2 billion, but the recent growth from 6 to 7 billion has occurred in only 12 years. Will the next billion be added so quickly or will we slow the tide toward a more sustainable peak figure? Since the mid-1990s, international attention has shifted away from family planning. Unless critical changes are made as rapidly as possible, even the high projection of 10.5 billion people in 2050 could be exceeded. In fact, business as usual has us on track to surpass 11 billion in 2050.It took nearly 130 years for the world population to grow from 1 to 2 billion, but the... more
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BY TXCHNOLOGIST The mission: defeat the enemy while preserving Uncle Sam’s pocketbook. Saving the Earth is a worthy, but secondary, objective. The Department of Defense last week rolled out its plan to consume less, and find new ways to source, energy. The need has become particularly pressing as operations in Afghanistan and Iraq last year led U.S. forces to consume 5 billion gallons of fuel. The military’s insatiable thirst for energy puts troops in danger as they transport fuel through hostile territory — the Marines estimate one service member is killed for every 24 convoys. It also exposes the Pentagon budget to price shocks in volatile energy markets. The “Operational Energy Strategy,” called for a three-pronged pincer movement: reduce energy demand and improve efficiency; expand energy options beyond petroleum, including biofuels and renewable energy; make energy security a priority for future plans. Here are nine ways that the military is trying to cut down its energy use.BY TXCHNOLOGIST The mission: defeat the enemy while preserving Uncle Sam’s... more
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The New York Times
Photo: Bill Hammitt on his farm near Portsmouth, Iowa, where he has terraced the land, refrained from tilling and taken other measures to curb soil erosion.
PART ONE...
April 12, 2011
High Prices Sow Seeds of Erosion
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
When prices for corn and soybeans surged last fall, Bill Hammitt, a farmer in the fertile hill country of western Iowa, began to see the bulldozers come out, clearing steep hillsides of trees and pastureland to make way for more acres of the state’s staple crops. Now, as spring planting begins, with the chance of drenching rains, Mr. Hammitt worries that such steep ground is at high risk for soil erosion — a farmland scourge that feels as distant to most Americans as tales of the Dust Bowl and Woody Guthrie ballads.
Long in decline, erosion is once again rearing as a threat because of an aggressive push to plant on more land, changing weather patterns and inadequate enforcement of protections, scientists and environmentalists say.
“There’s a lot of land being converted into row crop in this area that never has been farmed before,” said Mr. Hammitt, 59, explaining that the bulldozed land was too steep and costly to farm to be profitable in years of ordinary prices. “It brings more highly erodible land into production because they’re out to make more money on every acre.”
Now, research by scientists at Iowa State University provides evidence that erosion in some parts of the state is occurring at levels far beyond government estimates. It is being exacerbated, they say, by severe storms, which have occurred more often in recent years, possibly because of broader climate shifts.
“The thing that’s really smacking us now are the high-intensity, high-volume rainstorms that we’re getting,” said Richard M. Cruse, an agronomy professor at Iowa State who directs the Iowa Daily Erosion Project. “In a variety of locations, we’re losing topsoil considerably faster — 10 to as much as 50 times faster — than it’s forming.”
Erosion can do major damage to water quality, silting streams and lakes and dumping fertilizers and pesticides into the water supply. Fertilizer runoff is responsible for a vast “dead zone,” an oxygen-depleted region where little or no sea life can exist, in the Gulf of Mexico. And because it washes away rich topsoil, erosion can threaten crop yields. Significant gains were made in combating erosion in the 1980s and early 1990s, as the federal government began to require that farmers receiving agricultural subsidies carry out individually tailored soil conservation plans.
Those plans often included measures such as terracing steep ground or sowing buffer strips with perennial grasses to stabilize areas prone to erosion, such as the edges of fields near streams or borders between crops.
Many farmers, such as Mr. Hammitt, who is on the board of the Harrison County soil and water conservation district, also do little or no plowing and leave crop residues on harvested fields, techniques that reduce runoff.
But environmentalists claim that enforcement of conservation plans by the United States Department of Agriculture is not as strict as it should be and that the gains in fighting erosion have stalled or are being undercut.
U.S.D.A. data shows that the amount of farmland erosion nationwide from water fell substantially from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, then largely stagnated.
Enforcement is needed more than ever, environmentalists say, because high crop prices provide a strong incentive for farmers to plant as much ground as possible and to take fewer protective measures like grass buffer strips.
CONTINUED...
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/04/13/business/erosion/erosion-articleLarge.jpgThe New York Times
Photo: Bill Hammitt on his farm near Portsmouth, Iowa, where he... more
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Your viability ratings helped us select 22 nominees, then your votes determined the Top Three Online Vote Getters. These three pieces were chosen by you to be on our April PBS prime time special. Check them out and learn what you can do to help us make the show! Be sure to comment on our nominees too. Some of the best comments will make it on TV!Your viability ratings helped us select 22 nominees, then your votes determined the... more
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Arizona State University is a cutting edge research institution. Lightworks is a ground breaking initiative focusing on harnessing the sun and transforming it into energy.Arizona State University is a cutting edge research institution. Lightworks is a... more
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If you're in most parts of the United States, outside of the Midwest, you might wonder what the Ethanol brouhaha is all about. It's easy for some to dismiss the fuel as a diversion of resources, but there's more to it.
FlexFuel capable vehicles can use domestically produced E85 fuel, which has the potential to produce loads of horsepower and displace a significant amount of imported petroleum. While corn is the most prevalent Ethanol feedstock in America, this will change over time ...If you're in most parts of the United States, outside of the Midwest, you might... more
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When you think Mexico, think biofuels (not just tequila). That's the message of OriginOil, a Los Angeles, California, company that's been contracted by the Mexican government to produce 1 percent of the nation's jet fuel using algae in the next five years. By the end of the decade, the project aims to produce 20 times that amount, and propel Mexico to the front of biofuel producing nations.
:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/02/mexico-top-biofuel-producer-algae-oil-originoil.php#ch02When you think Mexico, think biofuels (not just tequila). That's the message of... more
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suzane
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2 years ago
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As UN Declares International Year of Forests, Groups Demand Solutions to Root Causes of Deforestation
Insist Indigenous & Forest Peoples' Rights Must Be at the Heart of Forest Protection
New York, 2 February 2011-At the launch of the High Level segment of the UN Forum on Forests today, Mr. Sha Zhukan, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs will declare 2011 "the International Year of Forests." Civil society groups advocating forest protection, Indigenous Rights, and climate justice are launching a program called "The Future of Forests," to ensure that forest protection strategies address the real causes of global forest decline, and are not oriented toward markets or profit-making.
Critics from Global Justice Ecology Project, Global Forest Coalition, Dogwood Alliance, Timberwatch Coalition, BiofuelWatch, and Indigenous Environmental Network charge that the UN's premier forest scheme: REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), advanced amidst controversy at the recent UN Climate Summit in Cancún, will not protect forests or stop deforestation.
"It is ironic that the UN is declaring 2011 the International Year of Forests considering that forests today are being destroyed and degraded faster than ever before," said Blessing Karumbidza, researcher at the Timberwatch Coalition in South Africa. "UN promises of social and environmental safeguards under REDD ring hollow considering how rates of forest loss have continued to escalate since the introduction of industry-friendly forest certification schemes. These schemes do nothing to prevent the wasteful consumption of timber products that drives forest loss, and do not address the ecological and social problems inherent to monoculture timber plantations."
"The Southern US has led the way in forest destruction and degradation and the export of these egregious practices globally," stated Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director of the Dogwood Alliance. "We are bringing increased attention to this disastrous reality to help stop the drive toward wood-based bioenergy, large-scale clearcutting, and the further conversion of forests to plantations in our region and worldwide."
"REDD will not stop deforestation for a few simple reasons," stated Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and North American Focal Point for Global Forest Coalition. "First, it is based on an unscientific definition of forests that includes monoculture tree plantations and even genetically engineered trees. Second, REDD does not address the underlying drivers of deforestation, so logging may be curtailed in protected areas, but then pushed to non-protected forests. Third, REDD enables industries in the North to continue polluting, worsening climate chaos and in turn devastating forests. A further problem is that REDD does nothing to reduce toxic impacts on the communities near these polluters," she concluded.
Forest peoples, especially Indigenous Peoples, insist there be real strategies in place to protect forests. These strategies must be consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adhere to the rights of free, prior and informed consent, and ensure that forest peoples remain the caretakers of their lands.
"Putting forests in the care of the people that depend on them is the best way to protect them. This includes collectively demarcating and titling Indigenous Peoples' territories and land, where most of the world's forest are found," stated Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of Indigenous Environmental Network. "Governments and corporations that profit from their plunder will never protect forests." [1] [2]
According to Dr. Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch, "The greatest emerging threat to forests is wood-based bioenergy. Scientific models predict that if the demand for wood-based energy continues to rise unabated, all forests and grasslands will be converted to bioenergy plantations by 2060." [3]
Global Forest Coalition released a report called "Getting to the Roots" at the recent UN Climate Conference in Cancún, Mexico to analyze the underlying causes of deforestation. The report concludes, "neoliberal economic policies are the main underlying causes since they are at the root of many of the other drivers of deforestation." [4]As UN Declares International Year of Forests, Groups Demand Solutions to Root Causes... more
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When it comes to breaking down plant matter and converting it to energy, the cow has it all figured out. Its digestive system allows it to eat more than 150 pounds of plant matter every day. Now researchers report that they have found dozens of previously unknown microbial enzymes in the bovine rumen -- the cow's primary grass-digestion chamber -- that contribute to the breakdown of switchgrass, a renewable biofuel energy source.
LINK : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141705.htmWhen it comes to breaking down plant matter and converting it to energy, the cow has... more
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"Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there's nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create diesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons. It's the worst way in the world to try to develop an alternative fuel." - Ron Paul
When bipartisanship breaks out in Washington DC, check to make sure your wallet is still in your pocket. Every time you fill up your car this winter you are participating in the biggest taxpayer swindle in history. Forcing consumers to use domestically produced ethanol is one of the single biggest boondoggles ever committed by the corrupt brainless twits in Washington DC. Ethanol prices have soared 30% in the last year as the supplies of corn have plunged. Only a policy created in Washington DC could drive up the prices of gasoline and food, with the added benefits of costing the American taxpayer billions in tax subsidies and killing people in 3rd world countries.
The grand lame duck Congress tax compromise extended a 45 cent incentive to ethanol refiners for each gallon of the fuel blended with gasoline and renewed a 54 cent tariff on Brazilian imports. The extension of these subsidies, besides costing American taxpayers $6 billion per year, has the added benefit of driving up food costs across the globe, causing food riots in Tunisia, and resulting in the starving of poor peasants throughout the world. This taxpayer boondoggle is a real feather in the cap of that fiscally conservative curmudgeon Senator Charley Grassley. He was joined in this noble effort by another fiscal conservative, presidential hopeful John Thune. It seems these guys hate wasteful spending, except when it benefits their states. The bipartisanship in this effort was truly touching, as Democrats Kent Conrad and Tom Harkin also brought home the pork for their states.
A bipartisan group of 15 senators signed a letter in late November demanding an extension of U.S. ethanol subsidies. I wonder if the fact they have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions during the past six years from pro-ethanol companies and interest groups like ADM, Monsanto, the National Corn Growers Association, and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association had anything to do with this demand. You can always count on a Senator to do what's best for his re-election campaign rather than what is best for the country. These symbols of political integrity will always spout the standard talking points:
Full Article: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25621.html"Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends... more
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Approximately six months ago, campesino farmers in Trujillo, Colon organized in the Campesino Movement of the Aguan, the MCA, were awarded provisional title to a farm which neighbors their community, as part of a long standing negotiation with Dinant Corporation, a biofuel company, whose land claims are illegitimate.
Since that time, the small farmers worked the land. In recent weeks they had noticed incursions into their land by armed security forces employed by the biofuel company, Dinant.
On Monday, November 15, the farmers went to their fields but were then attacked by Dinant security. Six were killed in the massacre and two more are in critical condition.
The massacre occurred the same day that the de facto Honduran president Pepe Lobo had planned to meet with the director of the US government development fund, the Millennium Challenge, in Denver to ask for funding for so called "renewable energy" - in Honduras, principally biofuels and dams.
World Bank And Other "Development" Groups Share Responsibility for the Massacre
The "renewable energy" plan Lobo is shopping around may be the result of an Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) funded technical support grant (T-1101) to the de facto government ushered in after the June 28 military coup. In November 2009, under a coup government and amidst grave human rights violations, the World Bank's (WB) International Finance Corporation gave Dinant Corporation a $30 million loan for biofuel production, and now shares responsibility in the massacre.
Policies supposedly intended to stop climate change are in reality fueling climate change. The world must invest in a renewable way of life, not destructive "renewable energy". Scientists have analyzed that biofuel industry together with the climate change prevention mechanisms currently promoted could actually result in the destruction of half of the planets forests.
In the same way that massacres cannot be stopped when justice systems are destroyed by military coups, the destruction of our planet cannot be stopped when the systems of governance have been hijacked by corporations who can buy off, or that failing, militarily intervene in nations attempting to build just forms of governance. Human rights and the environment cannot be separated.
US Military Base Bought for Agrarian Reform And Stolen for Agribusiness
During the past decade, campesinos in Honduras have challenged a series of illegitimate land titles obtained by agro-businessmen in a massive former US military training center known as the CREM.
On this land, over 5,000 hectares, the US military trained military forces from across Central America, particularly the Contra paramilitary forces attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Once the CREM center's operations ended, the Honduran government bought the land from a US citizen through the Honduran land reform program.
However, instead of being sold to small farmers, as the government was obligated by law to do, the land was illegally divided up between several large landholders as a result of corruption and fraudulent titling processes. A coalition of land rights organizations in Honduras organized in the Campesino Movement of the Aguan, the MCA, to challenge the illegal titles. Little by little the land titles were awarded to groups of campesinos organized in the MCA.
The titling process has been slow and marked by violent attacks by the large landholders who have influence in the government, police and military forces. Among the last of the CREM lands to remain in the hands of agribusiness interests is the farm called El Tumbador, approximately 700 hectares controlled by the Dinant Corporation, property of Honduras' most powerful agro-businessman, Miguel Facusse.
A biofuel businessman with interests in several corporations, Miguel Facusse is infamous for the use of fraudulent methods, including intimidation and violence, to obtain lands throughout the country.
The World Bank Backs The Corrupt And Violent Dinant Corporation
Since the military coup in June 2009, Honduras has been ruled by illegitimate, repressive regimes.
In November 2009, the WB extended a loan of $30 million to Dinant for its biofuel production in that region, despite a widely documented history of violence and corruption by the biofuel company. The WB failed in its human rights obligations in this case and shares responsibility for this massacre.
Given the conditions in Honduras, the WB must suspend both private and public sector funding to Honduras, and freeze funding of biofuels in the region. The biofuel industry in Central and South America violently displaces small farmers and contributes to global warming.
Another multinational public fund that finances international private investment, the Interamerican Investment Corporation, has also recently funded Dinant.
cont
(Annie Bird is co-director of Rights Action , www.rightsaction.org. Feel free to re-publish this article, citing author & source)Approximately six months ago, campesino farmers in Trujillo, Colon organized in the... more
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According to http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/27/green-crude-new-gold/#c5156 Green Crude Is The New Gold.... But the question is;
what's really is Green Crude?
"The production of biofuels from algae does not reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)" - Algae fuel, also called algal fuel, algaeoleum or third-generation biofuel, is a biofuel which is derived from algae. During photosynthesis, algae and other photosynthetic organisms capture carbon dioxide and sunlight and convert it into oxygen and biomass. Up to 99% of the carbon dioxide in solution can be converted, which was shown by Weissman and Tillett (1992) in large-scale open-pond systems. Several companies and government agencies are funding efforts to reduce capital and operating costs and make algae fuel production commercially viable. The production of biofuels from algae does not reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)
Conclusion: Green Crude is a big Polluter
"Peace through New Energy" by JPAccording to http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/sep/27/green-crude-new-gold/#c5156 Green... more
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The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
July's wildfires in Russia have led to a draconian wheat ban, pushing up prices. (Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA)In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties.
"[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors," De Schutter writes. "The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold."
He continues: "A significant contributory cause of the price spike [has been] speculation by institutional investors who did not have any expertise or interest in agricultural commodities, and who invested in commodities index funds or in order to hedge speculative bets."
A near doubling of many staple food prices in 2007 and 2008 led to riots in more than 30 countries and an estimated 150 million extra people going hungry. While some commodity prices have since reduced, the majority are well over 50% higher than pre-2007 figures – and are now rising quickly upwards again.
"Once again we find ourselves in a situation where basic food commodities are undergoing supply shocks. World wheat futures and spot prices climbed steadily until the beginning of August 2010, when Russia – faced with massive wildfires that destroyed its wheat harvest – imposed an export ban on that commodity. In addition, other markets such as sugar and oilseeds are witnessing significant price increases," said De Schutter, who spoke today at The UK Food Group's conference in London.
Gregory Barrow of the UN World Food Program said: "What we have seen over the past few weeks is a period of volatility driven partly by the announcement from Russia of an export ban on grain food until next year, and this has driven prices up. They have fallen back again, but this has had an impact."
Sergei Sukhov, from Russia's agriculture ministry, told the Associated Press during a break in the meeting in Rome that the market for grains "should be stable and predictable for all participants." He said no efforts should be spared "to the effect that the production of food be sufficient."
"The emergency UN meeting in Rome is a clear warning sign that we could be on the brink of another food price crisis unless swift action is taken. Already, nearly a billion people go to bed hungry every night – another food crisis would be catastrophic for millions of poor people," said Alex Wijeratna, ActionAid's hunger campaigner.
An ActionAid report released last week revealed that hunger could be costing poor nations $450bn a year – more than 10 times the amount needed to halve hunger by 2015 and meet Millennium Development Goal One.
Food prices are rising around 15% a year in India and Nepal, and similarly in Latin America and China. US maize prices this week broke through the $5-a-bushel level for the first time since September 2008, fuelled by reports from US farmers of disappointing yields in the early stages of their harvests. The surge in the corn price also pushed up European wheat prices to a two-year high of €238 a tonne.
Elsewhere, the threat of civil unrest led Egypt this week to announce measures to increase food self-sufficiency to 70%. Partly as a result of food price rises, many middle eastern and other water-scarce countries have begun to invest heavily in farmland in Africa and elsewhere to guarantee supplies.
Although the FAO has rejected the notion of a food crisis on the scale of 2007-2008, it this week warned of greater volatility in food commodities markets in the years ahead.
At the meeting in London today, De Schutter said the only long term way to resolve the crisis would be to shift to "agro-ecological" ways of growing food. This farming, which does not depend on fossil fuels, pesticides or heavy machinery has been shown to protect soils and use less water.The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental... more
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