Biofuel. The truth behind the spin that biofuels are the answer to energy security and dwindling oil reserves. Miles per Gallon or Meals per Gallon?

Industrial Biofuels are fuels produced from agricultural crops. The main agricultural crops used for biodiesel are oil seeds such as palm, soy, sunflower, rapeseed and jatropha, and for petrol, starches such as maize, (corn) wheat and sugars. In small quantities, they are easily blended with existing fuels.

In the UK two biofuel refineries will be converting about 1 million tons of wheat every year into biofuel. This could make around 15 million pitta breads a year (no, that number is not a typo!) and feed the whole population of Kenya for 25 days. Biofuels are then competing for wheat, just as are pitta breads and pitta breads are the losers, as those in poor countries cannot compete on the open market.

“While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs. And it’s getting more and more difficult every day.” Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, 2008

The food crisis, and skyrocketing demand for industrial biofuels, are exacerbating the situation for poor people and undermining their right to food. The World Bank estimated in 2008 that the crisis had already pushed a further 100 million people into poverty. ActionAid estimated at the time that 30 million more people were now hungry as a result of biofuels.

“It is a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.” Jean Zeigler, (speaking in 2007) United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food 2000-2008

By November 2009, maize prices in Zambia, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique were still around 60% higher than at the start of 2007; in Tanzania it was 150%. Small wonder that the food crisis sparked riots across the globe from the Philippines, Bangladesh and India; to Egypt and Senegal; and to Mexico, Haiti and El Salvador.

“Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV/4X4 with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn – which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.” Professors Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, 2007

Industrial biofuels do not offer a solution to fuel security. Rather, industrial biofuels are fuelling poverty and hunger because they are now competing with food crops, dramatically increasing the prices that poor people pay for food worldwide. At the same time, biofuels are having disastrous local impacts on food security and land rights for many of the communities where they are grown. Industrial biofuels are the main cause of the food crisis and recent rises in hunger. Despite this, political action on hunger and biofuels has been minimal. Industrial biofuels provide a false solution that allows rich nations to continue their love affair with the internal combustion engine, and industry to continue its business-as-usual approach. It has allowed developed countries to avoid the urgent and difficult realisation that our current levels of transport fuel consumption (and energy more generally) are unsustainable and need to be reduced.

Miles per Gallon should never win over Meals per Gallon.

‘Guerrilla gardening’ in action.

In the UK, Lewes, East Sussex, there is a community garden springing up in a run-down industrial estate.

A few have started starting an ‘Earth Repair’ project. They have removed the rubbish, cut back the brambles, made paths for the people who use it as a walk, making living willow arches, bowers and hideouts for children.

Reclaimed pallets are being filled with soil, edible perennials and vegetable seeds are being planted and young gardeners are teaching other people how to make compost and grow biodynamically.

In Lewes a ‘desert’ of waste land is again starting to bloom, or, as Isaiah says "Like a lily the land will blossom. It will rejoice and sing with joy".

Actions speak louder than words!

There are times when the only way to get over the problems and frustrations of the daily environmental news, oil spills, floods, extreme heat, etc, etc, is to actually get down and get on with something that will combat it, however small that attempt may seem to be.

Less than a year ago, eight months to be exact, I took over an allotment garden, well, actually a part of a field that was once, many years previously (20+) an allotment. Working there certainly eases the stress and strain that the daily round entails with the next door hens clucking away, the conversation of fellow workers, the horses in the next field and the constant bird song.

I have not spent enough time on the project, or so I thought, then I looked at the photos I had taken there and realised that there had actually been a lot of progress over the period. I tend to be somewhat obsessed regarding the appearance of a project and this is no exception and a delight is that so many that have passed by on the footpath have said they enjoy my efforts.

I used to cycle around Kent when I was in my early teens and always admired the look of the hop fields, so I have replicated this construction in the support for my beans and have placed soft fruit in the centre as well as sowing wild flower seeds at the margins. Even if it is not as productive as I am hoping, the bees and the passers-by will enjoy it!

The BP Oil Rig Disaster

Like you I have been focussed on the BP (Beyond Pollution) oil rig disaster that recently claimed 11 lives.

It has been reported that the leaking pipe, one mile down is spewing out oil at the rate of 5,000 barrels, 210,000 gallons a day. A safety valve that was supposed to shut off the flow of oil at the seabed in case of such an accident failed to operate, and so there is no way to stop the leak. The oil well taps into one of the largest U.S. reserves, quite simply this is an unprecedented environmental disaster.

Hundreds of imperilled species in the Gulf will be harmed by the toxic oil, the full extent of the damage will not be known for years to come as the oil could pour out for three months, efforts to contain the pollution being largely ineffective. We are but spectators.

As difficult as it is to deal with an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is indescribably more difficult in the Arctic, but Obama has authorized Shell Oil to conduct exploration drilling this summer in the seas off Alaska, with the same technology that was used at the BP disaster.

Our society and its wealth is based on cheap oil, but as the more accessible sources of cheap oil run out so the price of oil goes up and it then becomes economically viable to drill and strip the less accessible areas in order to fuel societies addiction to it. Think of how a drug pusher gets clients hooked on heroin and then pushes the price up and you have a comparable analogy.

Is it worth it? The families of the 11 that died, and those along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida whose lives are going to be changed for years may well be asking themselves the same question.

Can we now put the sort of investment that is going into the clean-up operation into Solar Power? Safe, clean and cheap. We will have to make some adjustments to enable the technology to come into action, but compared to the adjustments the families of the 11 dead and those that are to be affected by the oil spill polution, these will be as nothing.

We can start the change while there is still time in order to scale down our reliance on oil, or we simply wait for reality that is to come to hit us.

The chances are that I will never see my great grandchildren

But when they are born the world they will live in will be very different to today's world. They will look back on their history, that is actually our present, and ask what I did to avert the environmental disabled and oil scarce society they have inherited once I knew what was going on. They may wonder if I protested in marches, if I tried to stop creation being plundered, if I tried to lead by example, if I tried to shout out the implications of climate change for their generation but was often drowned out by those in my generation who were only interested in money and power and if I really cared about what I bought, eat, and drove. I hope and pray they do not think that I let them down.

The ‘Robin Hood Tax’; this is a tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle world poverty and climate change.

This tax on banks – not you or I - has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year. It could give a vital boost to the health service, schools, and the fight against child poverty as well as tackling poverty and climate change around the world.

It is simple and obvious and given the risks that the bankers took with the lives of the many that then had to bail them out, a small price to pay for the greed of many in their industry.

In the UK The Royal Bank of Scotland made a 3.6 billion pound loss. The bank, which is 84% taxpayer owned after having been supported by a 45 billion pound loan has just paid out 1.3 billion pounds in bonus payments.

Somehow this seems all wrong to me...

Have a look at the video and see what you think. The idea is not popular with the banking industry. I wonder why?

Greenwash, have you been taken in by it?

Many large companies have now awakened to peoples environmental concerns, but have resorted to ‘Greenwash’ in order to appear green. Exxon Mobil screened an advert in the UK claiming that “natural gas is one of the world’s cleanest fuels”. This advert, which had wind turbines as a part of the background, was soon banned from being broadcast by the UK Advertising Standards Authority because the claim was misleading.

Sadly Greenwash is still all around and when I saw the Solar Dave Spoof Commercial below, I had to link it. It sums up much of what some advertisers feed us with today

Continued Economic Growth Is Not Possible.

I am assured that we (the world it seems) are now back to a period of continued economic growth. I will happily accept the idea of continuing economic growth as soon as an economist demonstrates to me that the Earth will also grow at the same rate. Let’s face facts, indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable.

Let us imagine that an economy grows at 5% a year.

1st year 100%
2nd year 105%
3rd year 110.25%
4th year 115.76%
5th year 121.55%
6th year 127.63%
7th year 134.00%
8th year 140.71%
9th year 147.74%
10th year 155.13%
11th year 162.89%
12th year 171.03%
13th year 179.58%
14th year 188.56%
15th year 197.99%
16th year 207.89%

So, in the space of just 16 years our imagined economy is producing and consuming at over twice the rate it started at and at 20 years the figure is 252%. Isn’t this where our problems all started, when we put the word ‘gross’ (really gross) into "gross domestic product"?

Like the hampster below... it's impossible!