As the Rio+20 earth summit gets underway, the world is looking for a magic solution to our environmental problems and to meanwhile reduce poverty – but it won’t be biofuels.
Once, biofuels were seen as a miraculous, sustainable solution to climate change. But growing evidence shows that the EU’s insatiable demand for biofuels to run their cars has led to increased greenhouse gas emissions, rising world food prices, increasing hunger and ruined lives.
As foreign-owned biofuel plantations multiply, more poor people are being pushed off land they have farmed sustainably for years. 8000 hectares of common land has been taken from a community in the Kisarawe region of Tanzania.
A saga of landgrabbing and lost livelihoods is being replicated across Africa and elsewhere in the false name of ‘sustainable’ energy.
ActionAid is working with affected communities to help them assert their rights and is calling for support for biofuels to end at Rio+20.
The pictures don’t do anything for me. It looks like people living in rural Africa. I see no linkage to biofuels.
Then use your imagination and pretend that the biofuel in question is ethanol. The effect of government regulated ethanol in the U.S. has been to raise food prices. And all over Africa there have been land grabs , with the assistance of the World Bank Group, by investment groups to turn farmland into biofuel or carbon credit production. These are the result of misguided government policies to burn food in engines and create “carbon offsets”. All a perfect example of crony capitalism, where the weak, without recourse to legitimate property laws, get pushed aside. If the pictures don’t do anything for you, then google “world bank africa land grab” or similar and get a better idea of the corruption going on in the name of “sustainable energy” and the environment.
Have you never seen pictures of people in rural Africa before? These pictures just look like people in rural Africa. The captions could just as easily be “woman sewing” or “woman with children.”
If you wish to deride biofuels, I’m on board. But these pictures are a non sequitur.
GC, read the captions on the right. It puts a lot of things into perspective. However, you have a point. The pictures themselves say nothing.
Every rational person could see that biofuels are a very bad idea. Just like wind and solar they make no difference in the emissions demonized by the enviros, and they remove productive land and food from the supply chain. While I generally agree with Gamecock, the simple fact is that a better image to use for the true effects of biofuels would be the riots and killing in Egypt last year. A direct connection can be made between the food price increases caused by the biofuel industry and rioting and deaths in many countries.
Remember the capital these people received (if any) during what we would call “eminent domain” proceedings will soon be gone and they are then economically homeless. If the photogs return in five years and show them with swollen bellies from malnutrition, you’ll get the point without ever having to develop an imagination.
The woman sewing shows it all. She has electricity. 90% of people in rural Africa do not. The series of pictures is stupid; it has nothing to do with the issue.
I’m not so sure about the electricity. That looks remarkably like an early Singer, or a knock-off, that used a trundle pedal to drive a belt that drove the mechanism. I think the odds are good that she’s sewing my foot-power, and probably always has. It’s difficult to tell from a single photo, but I have seen a few of those “old” machines, and that appears to be one.
Don’t be so stupid. The drive belt is a band going thru the tabletop. If it were electric, the motor would be on top of the table and a much heavier drive belt. My Momma had one just like that when I was a kid. Yes! I’m 74 now.
Jerry, there’s no need to be insulting.
However, GC, I can confirm from personal experience that that is a foot-powered sewing machine.
Turns out there is no electricity:
http://businesstimes.co.tz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1536:uk-firms-failed-bio-fuel-dream-wrecks-lives-of-tanzanian-villagers&catid=35:features&Itemid=29
“UK firm’s failed bio-fuel dream wrecks lives of Tanzanian …
Mhaga has no electricity, and water has to be carried each day from a well several kilometres”
That dang Sun Biofuels, taking away their electricity!
And filling in their wells!
Wait . . . what? Oh, they never had electricity.
Folks, one reference lists Halima Ali as an “activist.” This whole story was put out by Action Aid and WWF. Published in the Guardian.
I smell a rat. If you don’t, fine. But I think you’ve been conned.
Relax guys. Only of interest because it’s in the formerly jatropha gung-ho Indy. Commandeering village common land and turning it over to inedible crops didn’t solve everyone’s problems. Imagine that…