The Last Straw (Monbiot/Guardian)

Finally somebody else out there has recognized that even using the non-edible part of food crops (straw and woodchips) for the creation of biofuels is not the answer either.
This because that is the very part of the plant that the soil desperately needs to replenish itself. Removing it, according to Monbiot (see below), will increase soil erosion by 100-fold.

To that I should add that anything that encourages monoculture, including some Scandinavian countries ideas of using plantation wood into biofuels, is ultimately not sustainable on a large scale. The world’s eco-systems only work so well because of the massive efficiency created by having so many different species of plant and animal living, growing, and passing on energy to each (sharing resources) in the same area. An efficiency destroyed when you remove all those interacting species and replace them with one single plant or animal whose most energy rich part you then remove for consumption elsewhere, and thereby effectively turn it into a waste product instead of another species’ food. Turning a complex multi-layered old-growth forest system into a pine tree mono-culture for biofuels is no exception.

Axel

Monbiot/Guardian, February 12, 2008
The Last Straw
By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 12th February 2008

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/02/12/the-last-straw/

A new generation of biofuels turns out to be another environmental disaster

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn’t listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists?

A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked by the media, proposes “genuine difficulties” in increasing the production of crude oil, “particularly after 2012.”(1) Though 175 big drilling projects will start in the next four years, “the fear remains that most of this supply will be offset by high levels of decline”. The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that oil supplies might peak, but “recent evidence of failed production growth would tend to shift the burden of proof onto the producers”, as they have been unable to respond to the massive rise in prices. “Total global liquid hydrocarbon production has essentially flatlined since mid 2005 at just north of 85 million barrels per day.”

The issue is complicated, as ever, by the refusal of the OPEC cartel to raise production. What has changed, Citi says, is that the non-OPEC countries can no longer answer the price signal. Does this mean that oil production in these nations has already peaked? If so, what do our governments intend to do?

Nine months ago, I asked the British government to send me its assessments of global oil supply. The results astonished me: there weren’t any(2). Instead it relied exclusively on one external source: a book published by the International Energy Agency. The omission became stranger still when I read this book and discovered that it was a crude polemic, dismissing those who questioned future oil supplies as “doomsayers” without providing robust evidence to support its conclusions(3). Though the members of OPEC have a powerful interest in exaggerating their reserves in order to boost their quotas, the IEA relied on their own assessments of future supply.

Last week I tried again, and I received the same response: “the Government agrees with IEA analysis that global oil (and gas) reserves are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future.”(4) Perhaps it hasn’t noticed that the IEA is now backtracking. The Financial Times says the agency “has admitted that it has been paying insufficient attention to supply bottlenecks as evidence mounts that oil is being discovered more slowly than once expected … natural decline rates for discovered fields are a closely guarded secret in the oil industry, and the IEA is concerned that the data it currently holds is not accurate.”(5) What if the data turns out to be wrong? What if OPEC’s stated reserves are a pack of lies? What contingency plans has the government made? Answer comes there none.....

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