Re-posting an article I wrote for another blog on May 16th 2007.
The title sounds daft, but it may soon be a reality for some poorer people. In our poorly-thought out rush to be green, the demand on many cereal crops for use as a base in biofuel production means that demand is outstripping supply. This means that prices will rise further, taking some basic foods above levels that some people will be able to afford - you drive, they starve.
As global oil production has or is about to peak, the switch from total dependency on fossil fuels is a good thing, but not enough has necessarily been done in developed countries to reduce energy consumption rather than just switching from fossil to biofuels. The availability of an alternative fuel source has meant most people have become complacent about the problem, without realising or understanding that there is not productive enough land in the world to grow crops for fuel and food. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that biofuels are totally bad, but they must be used in conjunction with a major shift in our consumption habits.
Of course, with higher relative incomes and a better standard of living, it is not the people in developed countries that will feel the negative effect of biofuels first, it is those in the developing countries, who it is predicted will also suffer the early effects on global warming more than most.
In May of this year, the UN FAO1 stated that world cereal production in 2007 is on track to reach a record level of 2 095 million tonnes, a rise of 4.8 percent over 2006 levels. But with stocks at their lowest level in over two decades, total supplies would still be barely adequate to meet increased demand, boosted by the fast-growing biofuels industry.
International prices for most cereals have risen significantly in 2006/07 so far and are likely to remain high in 2007/08, according to FAO’s latest Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. As a result, the cereal import bill of the low-income food deficit countries (LIFDCs) is forecast to increase by about one-quarter in the current season.
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation [↩]
Each week, we get two ‘free’ local newspapers delivered - The ‘Times’ and the ‘News’. Both are quite weighty papers, with their bulging section on houses for sale in the area. Some years ago, one of the publishers bought out the other publisher, so now they are both owned and published by the same company. I expected that at some point, both papers would merge into one, but maybe due to the potential loss of advertising revenue, they have stayed the same - pretty much carrying the same news too.
Usually, each paper has some ‘loose inserts’ aka junk mail, but this weekends paper (yes, just one of them) carried an outstanding 280g of junk mail! By anybodys standards this is an obscene waste of natural resources just for the paper content, let alone the environmental damage caused due to the design and printing processes.
I accept that junk mail is currently a fact of life - registering with the Mailing Preference Service has reduced dramatically the amount that gets posted to me, but my local postman still hand delivers copious amounts of junk mail (which he has no option to do by the way - the post office insist that Postman do this).
Surely the publishers of ‘free’ papers have a duty to limit the amount of junk that gets stuffed inside their papers?
To stop the Post Office delivering ‘Unaddressed Mail’, write to Opt-Outs, Royal Mail, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1RX. Phone: 0845 7950 950 or Email: optout@royalmail.co.uk
Well note quite - I’m pretty sure you can get vegetarian meat-less balls! Anyway, I came across this in TreeHugger today - if you’re interested in sustainable and natural building, you’ll know all of this, but it’s kind of nice to have even more people saying it.
According to Professor of Engineering, Julian Allwood;
“The big news about cement is that it is the single biggest material source of carbon emissions in the world, and the demand is going up,” …”If demand doubles and the best you can do is to reduce emissions by 30 percent, then emissions still rise very quickly.”
“The cement manufacturers are trying, and have invested millions of dollars in programs like the Sustainable Cement Initiative. They have improved efficiency significantly but are up against the basic chemistry: The chemical reaction that creates cement releases large amounts of CO2 in and of itself. Sixty percent of emissions caused by making cement are from this chemical process alone. The balance is produced from the fuel used in production, which may be mitigated by the use of greener technology. So to “go green,” cement makers try to cut the fuel side of the equation.”
The industry says “Because of our initiatives, emissions are growing slower than they would without the interventions.” But they are still growing like mad.
The full article in The International Herald Tribune, say some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.
Compounding the problem is the fact that cement used to be produced locally to where it was needed, but is now increasingly shipped long distances. On the Internet, cement brokers are now selling relatively cheap Ukrainian cement to all corners of the world. Demand is particularly high in the Middle East.
The dilemma facing cement producers in the developed world is that investing heavily in methods and equipment to curb CO2 emissions puts them in a financially disadvantaged position compared to less expensive cement produced (with more pollution) in less-developed parts of the world.
More than ever, governments need to look long and hard at their long-term goals and those of the planet. Research and standards need to be set for a reduction in the amount of cement used in construction and the alternatives that may be available. I am not naive enough to think that (with current building methods and ‘progress’) you can eliminate cement from the construction industry, but reduction is key.
This evenings sunset over Dorridge Park (around 6:30pm) brought with it some beautiful colours in both the sky and the clouds.
The photo above was taken with a mobile phone camera1 and doesn’t do it justice! The sky was an intense bright turquoise blue and in stark, beautiful contrast to the orange tint on the clouds.
I’m getting a new camera soon and hope to take some great ‘autumn’ photographs.
The sunset below was taken on 14th July 2007 and was over Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire UK.
National Express, the UK’s largest coach operator has cited ‘environmental concerns’ as the reason why it pulled out of a trial to run it’s fleet on a 30 percent biofuel blend.
A spokesperson for the company said “While biofuels may have a future role to play, what appears to be a green option may not actually be green after all”.
They are referring to the extensive growing of biofuel crops such as sugarcane and rape and the negative impact this has on the natural environment, workers and the knock-on effect of food prices worldwide.
The October 2007 issue of National Geographic also has a pretty hard report on biofuels and concludes that unless more efficient ways of extracting the fuel potential from plant sources can be found, there are serious problems. I will be summarising the National Geographic article in the near future.
At a time when the broadcast and print media are full of bad news, especially on the environmental front, it’s really great to hear some good, positive news for a change.
The YouTube video below shows how a project took on 10 acres of flat, hyper-arid desert on the border of Jordan and Israel. The area was 400m below sea level (one of the lowest points on earth), 2km from the Dead Sea and completely salted. With very low rainfall and August temperatures over 50 degrees, the mainstream thought was that the only way to farm was under plastic and with loads of inorganic fertiliser.
They started the project by digging swales that followed the contours of the landscape and enabled water capture over winter, and built up organic debris (mulch) on the banks of the swales. Certain trees were grown on the upper side of the swales that fixed nitrogen, and provided shade from the sun and the wind. The results were amazing and dumbfounded the experts because in the end, they grew things that simply shouldn’t have survived or occured there and managed to reduce the salt levels.
Compounding the problem is the fact that cement used to be produced locally to where it was needed, but is now increasingly shipped long distances. On the Internet, cement brokers are now selling relatively cheap Ukrainian cement to all corners of the world. Demand is particularly high in the Middle East.
National Express, the UK’s largest coach operator has cited ‘environmental concerns’ as the reason why it pulled out of a trial to run it’s fleet on a 30 percent biofuel blend.
