MEPs voted for a 6% cap on food-based biofuels yesterday. It could be worse (it always could) but it should be an awful lot better.
Action Aid report.
RSPB report.
EEB report.
BBC report.
Business green report.
Thomson Reuters report.
EU Observer report.
I am amazed that in this world when things are speeding up all the time the EU regards 2020 as an acceptable time to take account of indirect land use change (ie the rainforests that get cut down (for example) because some western farmer is sending his corn or wheat to be burned rather than eaten). Why, pray, are not biofuels banned until the industry comes up with an acceptable, verifiable and easy way to take account of ILUC – that would create the incentive for action?!
[registration_form]
Really can’t answer that question! It’s madness, really, isn’t it? 7 years worth of rainforest clearance is a high price to pay for mildly inconveniencing a few grain barons (not that I’m naive enough to think a biofuel ban overnight would slow deforestation by much but it surely would help).
Perhaps one answer is that despite the good work of the organisations you highlight, biofuel just isn’t as ‘sexy’ an issue as badgers? Despite being, in the long run, much more important.
I’m told it is closer to home than rain forest, appalling though that is. The sea of maize that now covers the North German Plain, is largely feeding bio-ethanol plants.
“some western farmer” – “inconveniencing a few grain barons”
Without this market artificially created by elected representatives in Brussels, growers will switch effortlessly to growing pigwheat. China has an insatiable demand for it. As wheat is not a nutritionally balanced food for pigs soybeans will still be required so forests will still be cleared to meet rising global demand. As they will to supply wood pellets for British power stations now that the same elected representatives have decided to close our coal and nuclear power stations.
Sooner or later, Major – de Coverley will return and put a stop to it all.