Environment: Biodiesel "most destructive crop on earth"

Crops grown for biodiesel are potentially destructive

Crops grown to provide raw material for biodiesel fuel are potentially hugely destructive, according to environmentalist George Monbiot, and "no solution to the energy crisis."

Monbiot writes in The Guardian today: "The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel."

He is not against the reuse of waste oils such as cooking oils, but argues that besides requiring vast areas of land which would otherwise be used for food production - especially in developing nations - an industry is being established for large-scale industrial plantations that have a hugely negative impact in their local areas.

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Biodiesel producers are looking for crops that grow quickly and can easily and cheaply be synthesised into oil. Palm oil has already proved successful. Monbiot quotes research by Friends of the Earth claiming that between 1985 and 2000, the establishment of oil-palm plantations led to 85% of deforestation in Malaysia. In Sumatra and Borneo, around 4m hectares of forest has been cleared to make way for palm plantations, with a further 6m hectares scheduled for clearance in Malaysia and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Four new biodiesel refineries are also being built in Malaysia, with another in Sarawak: foreign consortia are also building plants in Singapore, all to synthesise palm oil to make fuel, mostly for export to the west.

"The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field", says Monbiot. "The orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist."

Monbiot concludes by commenting on the UK government's policy: "For the widening of the M1 alone, the government will pay £3.6bn - more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme. Instead of trying to reduce demand (for fuel) it is trying to alter supply."