Palm Oil Disaster
Here's a story I'm not
surprised to see (emphasis added):
Only a few years ago, oil from palm trees was viewed as an ideal biofuel: a
cheap, renewable alternative to petroleum that would fight global warming.
Energy companies began converting generators and production soared.
…
Long a primary ingredient in food and cosmetics, palm oil derivatives caught
on about five years ago as a source of renewable energy, spurred by subsidies in many European Union countries.
Imports have risen 65 percent since 2002.
Environmentalism is popular. Politicians want to be popular. It's easy to
buy votes by spending other people's money! Sure, lots of that taxpayer money
immediately goes overseas (to the benefit of non-taxpayers) to pay for the
imports, but everybody's too busy feeling good about themselves to care.
Continuing…
The report issued late last year by Wetlands International, Delft Hydraulics
and the Alterra Research Center of Wageningen University in Holland studied
the carbon released from peat swamps in Indonesia and Malaysia that had been
drained and burned to plant palm oil trees. About 85 percent of the world's
palm oil comes from the two countries, and about one-quarter of Indonesia's
plantations are on drained peat bogs, the report said.
The four-year study found that 600 million tons of carbon dioxide seep into
the air each year from the drained swamps. Another 1.4 billion tons go up in
smoke from fires lit to clear rain forest for plantations — smoke that
often shrouds Singapore and Malaysia in an impenetrable haze for weeks at a
time.
Together, those 2 billion tons of CO2 account for 8
percent of the world's fossil fuel emissions, the report said.
Friends of the Earth, another environmental group, called the report
"astonishing," and said it shows that harvesting palm oil for fuel is
counterproductive. "It undermines the whole project," said a climate
specialist for the group, Anne van Schaik.
I'm shocked, shocked, that a well-intentioned government
program manages to, in five short years, achieve the exact opposite of its
intended goals on an enormous scale.
This is a marvelous example of the evils of subsidies. That tax money was
taken forcibly from millions of people — some of whom would have opposed the
subsidies in the first place — and then spent to achieve a result that even
supporters of the program would find abhorrent.
It's worse than mere waste; it's active harm. Yet subsidies remain as popular
as ever, to both politicians and the public.
This leaves us with the obvious and important question, "Are the subsidies
being ended?" The story doesn't say, but somehow I think I know the answer.
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Comments: 4
An amusing story, but I doubt the relevance of some of the stats and the interpretation. For example, a lot of the deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia is from logging for timber production, and leftover wood is burned to clear land for agriculture. Some of this land would be used for palm oil production, but not ALL the land clearing - hence linking 8% of the world's fossil fuel emissions to palm oil plantations is pushing the stats into the "damned lies" arena.
More importantly, the CO2 emissions from the land clearing and bog draining would be mostly a "one off" (some residual bog emissions after year 1, but not very much) whereas the production of palm oil for fuel would be ongoing. Try calculating the PRESENT VALUE of total CO2 emission reduction over a possible production period. For argument sake, humanity will probably require fuel for an industrialised society from now one, and might use palm oil as a fossil (crude) oil substitute until economic crude oil reserves were exhausted (200 years??). Or, even simpler, just calculate the break-even timeframe:
To quote the wetlands site:
"The palm oil yield is between 3 and 6 tonnes per hectare per year. This means that the production of palm oil causes 10 to 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Using fossil fuels instead causes less than only 3 tonnes of CO2 (energy value of a tonne of palm oil)."
So--- after 10 years of palm oil production you would have released max. 30 t CO2 during startup, and eliminated 30t of CO2 that would have otherwise been produced by buring fossil fuels instead of palm oil for 10 years. From Year 11 onwards you'd be ahead.
Not that this has anything to do with the pros and cons of government subsidies. But it does undermine your point that the subsidies are having the exact opposite effect of that intended.
Regards
http://enoughwealth.com
Mr Enough Wealth,
If you have not already you should consider working for Al Gore's hedge fund. You would be great at calculating the TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
Chris Lindgren
PS Even a $00.01 per day increase in the cost of energy from "carbon caps" puts that energy out of financial reach of 10% of the worlds population. In the name of the planet I assume you say let them starve to death? Sleep well.
It's true that this story is merely anecdotal, but the point stands.
Subsidies are inherently corrupt and wrong-headed. One person (or one group of people, like the government) is far more susceptible to incorrect data (either through intentional malfeasance or simple incompetence) than the market.
*However*, even without subsidies it is still *vital* that externalities be taken into account when calculating the true cost of the production of energy.
In response to Mr. Lindgren's comment "A $.01 per day increase in the cost of energy puts that energy out of financial reach of 10% of the worlds population"; hyperbole aside, your comment implies that artificially lowering the price of energy is OK if it makes energy more accessible. That's ludicrous. If you really feel that way, you should feel free to subsidize energy with *your* money, not with mine.
"externalities" that is a good one. I always like to think of people crunching the numbers on the "externalities". Tough stuff to do, I wish I was so smart to understand them all.
And for the record I never suggested any artificial lowering or subsidies. The only thing artificial in this thread is the word "externalities" I am simply pointing to a fact that warmists like to ignore, your actions will lead to peoples deaths.
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