[MPWG] Sustainable Service Marks?

[myron hardesty]

On Feb 8, 2008, at 9:42 AM, Goods From The Woods wrote:

> Jennifer,
> My guess is the lack of public participation is a result of the
> biofuels.  Policy for biofuels was being developed 10 years ago.
> There is no desire for stakeholder input on fuels.
> Penny

There SHOULD be......





February 8, 2008

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions  
than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing  
these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being  
published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent  
months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental  
cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the  
prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look  
at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is  
being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the  
tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases  
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed,  
but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon  
emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain  
forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not  
matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the  
greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they  
discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all  
biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in  
new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people  
are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse  
gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one  
of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at  
Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting  
error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil  
fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced  
by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation  
proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into  
fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for  
example.

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse  
gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said  
Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at  
the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making  
climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing  
down carbon emissions.”

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world  
has to reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to  
avert disastrous environment consequences.

In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’s  
most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a  
letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi,  
urging a reform of biofuels policies. “We write to call your  
attention to recent research indicating that many anticipated  
biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming,” the letter said.

The European Union and a number of European countries have recently  
tried to address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that  
imported biofuels cannot come from land that was previously rain forest.

But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study  
shows, the purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads  
indirectly to the destruction of natural habitats far afield.

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have  
because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is  
inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in  
on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for  
biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland  
in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused  
indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers  
had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next.  
Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land  
that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are  
planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting  
the Amazon to do it,” he said.

International environmental groups, including the United Nations,  
responded cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still  
be useful. “We don’t want a total public backlash that would  
prevent us from getting the potential benefits,” said Nicholas  
Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who  
said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to study the  
evidence.

“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver  
bullet of climate change,” he said. “We fully believe that if  
biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the  
problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.”

The European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent  
biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United  
States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport  
fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. To reach these goals, biofuels  
production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents,  
supporting a burgeoning global industry.

Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its  
annual profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because  
of rising demand for biofuels.

Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately  
attacked the new studies as “simplistic,” failing “to put the  
issue into context.”

“While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences of  
differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today,  
how world demand for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic  
alternatives are to meet those growing demands,” said Bob Dineen,  
the group’s director, in a statement following the Science  
reports’ release.

“Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can  
begin to address the challenges of energy security and environmental  
protection,” he said.

The European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse  
gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel, and has  
other advantages as well, like providing new income for farmers and  
energy security for Europe in the face of rising global oil prices  
and shrinking supply.

But the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is  
taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once  
anticipated.

Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now  
was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy  
to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments  
should quickly turn their attention to developing biofuels that did  
not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was  
often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The  
comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all  
biofuels on cropland.”
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