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.
The effect on working conditions is equally horrendous. The large areas of monocultures are owned by landlords and global corporations. The related article shows how even conservative politicians in Brazil have likened the new situation to that pertaining 500 years ago.
The problem for Western consumers tempted to buy biofuel for 'green' reasons is that they will not be able to tell at the pumps where the fuel came from.
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/
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