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Dirty Biofuels: Leaked Data Shows Some Worse Than Fossil Fuels
Palm oil and soy bean biodiesel nearly as bad as tar sands
According to leaked data from the European Commission obtained by EuroActiv, greenhouse gas emissions from some biofuels are higher than those from fossil fuels, when Indirect Land Usage Change (ILUC) is factored in.
Palm oil-driven deforestation in Borneo (photo: Rainforest Action Network)
EuroActiv reports:
ILUC happens when forests and wetlands are cleared to compensate for lands taken to grow biofuels elsewhere.
One recent report predicted that all of Malaysia’s tropical peatswamp forests would be destroyed by the end of the decade because of ILUC - with alarming consequences for greenhouse gas emissions - unless the expansion of palm oil production was halted.
To measure the climate impact of fuels, Brussels favours assigning default values based on a calculation of their full lifecycle emissions, hence the debate over ILUC factors and biofuels.
In its recent review of the Fuel Quality Directive, the EU proposed a default value of 107g CO2 equivalent per megajoule of fuel (CO2/mj) for oil from tar sands, as compared to 87.5g CO2/mj for crude oil, reflecting the greater environmental harm that its production causes.
Yet while advanced ‘second generation’ biofuels comfortably outperform fossil fuels in the EU’s new data, palm oil is ascribed a value of 105g, soybean 103g, rapeseed 95g, and sunflower 86g, once ILUC is factored in.
The Guardian has a graph reflecting the data:
The figures showing palm oil biodiesel and soybean biodiesel being almost as polluting as the tar sands deals a severe blow to the biofuels industry.
EuroActiv notes:
...industry and civil society sources described the data as credible and in line with other studies. One said it would sound a death knell for the biodiesel industry, if published.
“I think the science has proved clearly that because of the link to deforestation in places such as South East Asia, a lot of the biodiesels have significantly negative impacts on the climate,” Robbie Blake, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, told EurActiv.
The Guardian adds:
Palm oil biodiesel also received another blow on Friday, with the US Environmental Protection Agency suggesting it fails to meet the US requirement of emitting at least 20% less carbon than diesel from crude oil.
Robbie Blake, biofuels campaigner, at Friends of the Earth Europe, told me: "It's getting quite indisputable that the use of soy or palm oil to fuel our cars is even dirtier than conventional fossil fuels. Forests in Asia and South America are being destroyed by the expansion of plantations to meet the European market. It's a delusion for politicians to think that biodiesel will solve climate change."
63 Comments so far
Show AllMaize and Sugar Cane and Sugar Beets are all specifically listed after all.
Still, the data speaks for the unmentioned cannabis:
Less than 50% the emmissions of Maize, and just over 60% the emmisions for Sugar Cane for "Biodiesel -Land Using", which would include cannabis cellulose if it was made legal.
Yet the absence of hemp is glaring, as is sorghum. I've worked on a small sustainable biofuel farm that used most of the crops listed in the graph in test plots.
The idea of clearing forest or repurposing arable land to raise fuel crops has been unmitigated folly from the outset - aggravating the worldwide food crisis and global warming at the same time - as predicted, and as concluded in study after study. And yet we still hear "biofuels" invoked by our so-called leaders as a poor excuse for the pretense of a solution to something, while biofuel subsidies and mandates remain in effect throughout the western world.
When will it end? Not soon enough. Counter-productive responses to the ecological crisis will predominate so long as key decisions hinge on how much money can be scooped in by the ruling class. The biofuels fiasco is the first tragic mistake in this pattern. My crystal ball says a panic of massive sea-wall construction will be next, then mankind's third and final fatal mistake will be geoengineering to block sunlight.
The graph shows this clearly.
Ethanol and Methanol (biodiesel), both "land using" and not, are at the low end of carbon emmissions and are - or should be- at the high end of profitability and marketability.
Sugar cane for ethonal is okay in places. Maize should be used for methanol from the stalks etc.
Palm oil is nuts and should be reined in.
Actually it clearly doesn't show anything like that, as the graph only shows the GHG emission implications, just a single dimension of this complex issue. EROI, alternative uses for farmland and other implications are not shown in the graph at all.
"Ethanol and Methanol (biodiesel), both "land using" and not, are at the low end of carbon emmissions and are - or should be- at the high end of profitability and marketability."
Right. "Should be" in some ideal, non-existing, even theoretically impossible "market" that can somehow magically take into account the effects of current decisions that occur in decades or even larger spans of time and can somehow work in the general interest of people who aren't even born yet. What are you talking about? Issues of "profitability" and "marketability" shouldn't even come into the question here. This is about managing a limited, irreplaceable and incredibly important resource sustainably - something that "even" large businesses prefer to do with standard centralised control through ownership, leaving the market out of it.
I'm talking about a graph which shows that some biofuels are just as carbon polluting as coal, whearas others are much better.
The EROEI for ALL biofuels doesn't compare to fossil sources-not as long as Industrial Ag is employed- so what's the point of pointing out that it isn't mentioned? Saying that the EROEI on biofuels can't match coal or petrol doesn't solve the problem of meeting fuel demands sustainably -and that isn't even the question at hand!
And not all biofuels represent an "alternative use for farmland".
We can't eat the stalks and leaves of maize, for example. So turning them into methanol doesn't represent any "alternative use for farmland".Just an alternative market to the CAFOs for the "waste product".
Other biofuel sources such as cannabis would be a mere crop switch for cotton farmers, or a "alternative use" for sheep land or areas deforested by logging.
And of course none of this accounts for the millions of acres of good land currently growing decorative grass lawns that must be mowed constantly or ornamental shrubs that must be sprayed with chemicals and heavily watered -we can grow useful plants besides tomatoes in these acres. ;)
Ethonal and methanol fuels can be and are derived from waste products -especially methanol which we can get from ANYTHING carbaceous, even coal- as well as purpose-grown on inexpensive land. THAT'S what makes them such profitable and marketable commodities -as soon as the petrol becomes too pricey and the coal pollution becomes too egregious in people's perception (they both already are in reality).
I fear you are falling for the mistaken notion that nothing we humans can do to profit ourselves can also help the greater biosphere.
Imagine a farm growing feed corn today. Tomorrow, the farmer switches to growing his corn ears for feed, but his stalks and leaves for fuel. The bump in income because of the greater price for fuel than feed gets him out of his current debt crisis. Next year, he sells ONLY to the fuel maker, depriving the world of a few hundred CAFO cows that never should have been alive in the first place. A few years later, he has gotten himself out of debt and built up enough of a stake to finally give himself and the wife the retirement they've been putting off. So he sells his farm. If such a group existed and could give him the right price, he could sell to a group determined to convert the land to a biodiversity-boosting yet still productive polyculture including trees and perennial shrub hedgerows. They reduce the fuel-crop maize drastically, but retain some for farm machines and extra cash. Ten years go by and the soil and surface biology is singing more gloriously than ever before -the place is a carbon sink that produces food for 100 people and countless wild creatures and insects. But fossil fuel depletion is now getting serious, and with cannabis now legal, the group faces a tough decision. They decide to switch cannabis in for the annual food crops in their polyculture. The fuel is badly needed, grains are better grown elsewhere, and urban/suburban gardening has eliminated the need to grow market vegetables. With the improved qualities of cannabis over maize, the farm/woodland now becomes wholly energy sustainable, while providing the market with a large surplus for fuel, and staying a carbon sink.
Now, if you followed all of that, you should see that it IS possible to profit humans and the planet at the same time -it just takes working hard and working smart.
And hopefully you've had a demonstration of the truth of life that just because one doesn't understand or know how something could work, it doesn't always mean that something can't work. ;)
And you drew the conclusion that some are good, some are bad. To which I pointed out that this is only a single measure and you can not decide how "good" a biofuel is based on this.
"The EROEI for ALL biofuels doesn't compare to fossil sources-not as long as Industrial Ag is employed- so what's the point of pointing out that it isn't mentioned? Saying that the EROEI on biofuels can't match coal or petrol doesn't solve the problem of meeting fuel demands sustainably -and that isn't even the question at hand!"
And when exactly did I say that? I said that the graph you drew your conclusions from does not contain this information. It's pretty important to know if, say, the EROEI is below 2, which is the case with corn afaik, in deciding what a particular piece of land will be used for.
"And not all biofuels represent an "alternative use for farmland""
Right now, the waste source is minimal (about 10% of all biomass based fossil fuels). So not all but most actually do. I don't think there's too much problem with converting waste into biofuels if there's no better use. They can be a part of a closed-cycle ecological economy. But only a supporting part, as you said in your examples. And, which was the point of the second half of my post, without markets taking any role.
"I fear you are falling for the mistaken notion that nothing we humans can do to profit ourselves can also help the greater biosphere."
Exactly. I am falling for it. I blame history for that, because it keeps substantiating this mistaken notion. I know theory knows better, so maybe I'm mad when I trust it more, but these are my limits and I have to live with them :-/
Sorry to say this but you're using the same pattern of argument as a lot of GMO supporters: list all the wonderful theoretical stuff the technology could do without looking at the real world. I am not against technology itself. I don't think ideas in themselves are bad. But they are born and exist within a certain social structure, and this is mostly what determines their use within society, not theories and ideals. Right now, in the particular case of biofuels, the most important seems to be their almost seamless integration into the current energy economy and keeping the PR advantage of calling these sources "green".
"And hopefully you've had a demonstration of the truth of life that just because one doesn't understand or know how something could work, it doesn't always mean that something can't work. ;)"
No, actually I understand that in theory these are just "tools" that could be used responsibly. It's just that for some reason (for pretty obvious reasons from a Marxist point of view actually) they are never ever used that way, just the opposite. Basically, the problem is not technical: it's not that reorganising the economy is technically difficult, because we don't have the science or technology or manpower or resources or whatever. No, these things are all there. The problem is human: our current social-economic system simply does not allow (and pushes against) any kind of ecological reorganisation of the economy. And this is why I think technical arguments about how a particular piece of technology can be used in a green way is good or not (tbh I'm pretty sure that almost all technology could be used well) - the question is not about the possibilities but about how the technology will be a part of society. If you can see the actual social processes, you should not let idealism and speculation mislead you - and these processes now are imo pretty fucking obvious wrt biofuels :-/
So:
1. Actually I was responding to another poster who was saying all biofuels are bad news in many more words than that.
2. No one said you were saying that. I was just extending your reasoning. Of COURSE the EROEI is lower for biofuels than fossil fuels. Of COURSE the EROEI should be a factor in determining crop type and location. But you are assuming that the low EROEI for biofuels compared to fossil condradicts growing them "instead" of food crops. This is not true both because that is a false choice AND because the EROEI on some fuel/multi-use crops justifies growing themeven with the false choice imposed.
3. Read William Deneven on human-shaped landscapes in the pre-Columbian Americas. There are many more examples from history that demonstrate the possibilities for biosphere enhancing human activities, but the Indians' land-use is one of the strongest. As for the rest of this response, it is frankly useless because you are lecturing from obvious ignorance.
4. It doesn't require reorganizing the economy, just some different land-use practices and different markets for Ag products and "waste". As my example demonstrated for anyone who wants to allow themselves to see.
2. No, you were just attributing a reasoning to me, not extending mine. What I was thinking of was the fact that EROEI and other technical measures seem to be completely ignored in deciding how and where and when biofuels are actually produced.
3. I meant the dominant social system and its history, I thought that was quite obvious. As for my ignorance, maybe you could point out something concrete? What exactly did I say that is so clearly ignorant and opposite to well established truths?
4. As I was trying to say in my previous post: your example only demonstrates the technical possibility of how biofuels could work in theory, and I never disagreed with that. On the other hand, it says nothing about reality: about how biofuels are and will actually be used in society on a macro level. Not on the level of theories and what-ifs, but in actual large scale practice. This is always the most important question, not whether some technology could be used well in theory. For example, how exactly do you propose biofuel (or livestock feed fwiw) production on land of 3rd world countries bought up by Western and other monied interests will stop within this economic system? Do you really think that any kind of land use regulation can have an effect on that?
Cane Sugar is a soil exhaustive plant as well as a water hungry one.
But some places are very wet, and can allow for sufficient rotation to keep up soil health.
Hence why I wrote "in some places".
It's not the best source for sure. I agree with that.
It has been widely known for years that ethanol use for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gases is absolutely counterproductive. Legislative mandates and taxpayer support for ethanol are not intended to heal the Earth, but to generate profits for Archer Daniels Midland. Anyone who has looked at the full-cycle impact of ethanol knows this.
This Scientific American article, for instance, is almost 3 years old:
Which is why I wrote that maize should be used to make METHANOL NOT ETHANOL.
Response? ;)
I'll return to the point I started with: The idea of clearing forest or repurposing arable land to raise fuel crops has been unmitigated folly from the outset.
Your current tack - that agricultural waste can be used to produce methanol - does not conflict with my concern that allocating land for food crops is crazy.
But what is agricultural waste? In my own garden, I compost the chaff. One often hears of strategies to put "forest waste" to some use. But forests don't produce waste. Only humans produce waste.
It is what I have said from the start, in my very first response to your post.
So how 'bout an apology for using a junior-level rehtoric trick just because you've run out of real arguments?
Currently, much of the non-edible-by-humans portion of food crops does go to either waste or animal feed. That is what methanol from plants would be competing with. Not human food.
Much, MUCH arable land goes to waste today.
Even the land supposedly going to grow food.
We need to try and remember that there is a demand for liquid fuels in our society, and that fossil sources will be depleted one day. Where else can we get these fuels is the question. Because SOMEONE is going to get them however they can be gotten. We here can't stop them, but we might be able to guide things a better way.
Your closing paragraph above sounds like a briefing from an ADM lobbyist, but earlier you were close to arguing that useful biofuel production could be limited to the processing of "waste" (whatever that is).
You are either in favor of raising crops for biofuels, or opposed, or undecided. Which is it? If you'd like for me to refrain from mischaracterizing your argument, I'd have an easier time of it if I could figure out what your argument is.
Anyone who cares about nature and has done a little homework knows the rainforests cannot be cut down to grow biodiesel. But these environmentalists are not addressing the viewpoint of those who know and care. They are addressing the viewpoint of those who don't know and don't care. In the process they are handing more power to those who don't know and don't care. They are in effect saying "we trust you to be stewards of our energy production, but we don't like how you're doing it". They may as well chop off the "but" because nothing past that will be heard. So these are not real environmentalists, but fake environmentalists. They want to buy new Range Rovers and go roving around the landscape with environmental grants, that's all. In contrast to that, we on the far-left understand that fuel production has to fit into a holistic scheme to achieve sustainability. First, we limit our fuel consumption. And what we do consume, we produce using permaculture methods, which effectively preserve the wildlands, while at the same time serving our needs. Part of our scheme is minimizing meat/dairy, which cuts out five times the amount of land use as our transport fuel needs require. We also use rail transport mostly, and personal transport is 40 mpg or better. We can do 200 mpg, everyone knows. So the idea that biofuels are bad is of course misleading. Biofuels are part of sustainability. It is "supply-side" ekonomics that fail the people. Notice how the authors won't make that connection between the destruction and its real cause.
The most unfortunate thing in all this is that basic science, some economic and agricultural & forestry data, a little bit of mathematics, and just a few graduate students working on their master's theses could have shown that this would be the case BEFORE any of this was even made into policy with such disastrous consequences. What will it take for the careerist bureaucrats and the totally clueless politicians of the EU to finally drop their asinine "mandate" of 10% (stated goal) of biofuels in their transportation fuels consumption?
Biodiesel or any other biofuel will ultimately be used mostly in conventional IC-engines whose efficiency is limited by thermodynamics. (Technically, they can also be used in fuel cell vehicles, but the overall efficiency with an onboard fuel reformer is not much better than for an IC engine). So, why cut down a forest to grow monoculture crops for biofuel (or use up farmland for biofuel production which necessitates deforestation elsewhere to make up for farmland lost), only to burn the fuel thus produced, in an IC engine? It would be much better to focus on reducing the number of personal vehicles by improving the already pretty decent public transportation system and by reducing the need for all this driving. Yes, German companies may end up selling fewer cars, but THAT is what will be required ultimately, anyway!
>>"In its recent review of the Fuel Quality Directive, the EU proposed a default value of 107g CO2 equivalent per megajoule of fuel (CO2/mj) for oil from tar sands, as compared to 87.5g CO2/mj for crude oil, reflecting the greater environmental harm that its production causes.
Yet while advanced ‘second generation’ biofuels comfortably outperform fossil fuels in the EU’s new data, palm oil is ascribed a value of 105g, soybean 103g, rapeseed 95g, and sunflower 86g, once ILUC is factored in."<<
The EU bureaucracy and the political system can be unwieldy and slow to react when their policies are shown to be failing. That said, however, on the matter of climate change, they are still more competent, more professional and much less anti-science and much less obstructionist compared to their counterparts in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. But their biofuel mandate is one huge disgrace that is best killed sooner than later. Keep in mind that the same EU ranking of fuels is infuriating the Canadians wanting to sell their tar sands oil there. And the EU is NOT conducting any phony "review" on this matter. And they have a habit of infuriating the Canadians from time to time, by banning seal products import, and earlier, by temporarily banning beef from Canada.
Thanks much for several excellent links. The third article references a study by Vandana Shiva called "Biofuel Hoax: Jatropha and Land Grab." It's been years since thoughtful people caught wise - Shiva's study is from 2007.
A passage from the first article you linked:
If human systems were capable of learning, the biofuels fiasco could serve as a durable lesson in how the same powerful interests which caused the ecological catastrophe can lead remediation efforts dangerously astray. But official encouragement of biofuels keeps rolling along, year after year, solely because of graft. For that matter, graft is the only reason biofuels idiocy ever got started.
Translated reports from Reporter Brazil://www.reporterbrasil.org.br/biofuel/exibe.php?id=125
In 2010 Shell Chemical was bought by Brazilian company Cosan and the following year ethanol from sugar cane was recognized by the EPA as the desirable biofuel - which of course - Shell Chemical is positioned to work with cane bagasse for plastics, and other evolving chemical interests. In the mean time ethical Brazilian are struggling to document the chain of invasions for agribusiness export in Brazil that are and have been resulting in the Guarani genocide.
Keep in mind also that the major meat packers Pilgrims pride, Smithfield etc. are now Brazilian OWNED by JBS. Major feed lots in the Five Rivers region out west - major contribution to undermining family farming/ranching.
What was the population 400 years ago? Can the European countries live within the ecological footprint available within their own countries? Can the other rich countries elsewhere do so without sucking up resources from all over the planet, including the oceans, and polluting all over the planet?
The REAL problem is NOT "too many people", although it is clearly a problem, or one of the major problems. The REAL problem is HOW this population lives and WHAT relation it has with nature and fellow humans and WHAT motivates them most in life.
How long do you think it would take to reduce the human population to acceptable levels? And by what means? Do you think there is that much time to address the crisis on hand?
The crisis is extreme climate change. If you think the cause is overpopulation, are you advocating some form of mass culling? Even if everyone decides to limit their family size to no more than 1 or 2 children, do you know how long it would take to reduce the human population by several billions? Is there that much time to take action on this urgent crisis?
Assuming that the human population is reduced to 2 billion or 1 billion, what level of consumption would be sustainable to GUARANTEE that no more forests would be cut down? Have you thought about THAT?
If you still think that mass culling is the only way, then may I suggest that you start from those with the highest level of consumption, the largest ecological and carbon footprints, and then work downward? That would provide the fastest "relief", more bang for your buck, if you will. Unless you have other ideas as to who should go first.
There isn't much time to address the crisis on hand. Fortunately or not, the mass culling chickenhawks are taking care of business.
Direct democracy
Yes, total consumption (or total destruction) = population x per capita consumption (or destruction).
BOTH the terms on the right need to go down for the total consumption to be reduced. However, the per capita consumption part can be reduced much sooner and with much less pain than reducing the population number.
What matters here is the biggest factor causing environmental destruction and the fastest way to take action.
Saying overpopulation is the biggest factor doesn't cut it, due to the simple fact that NOT everyone consumes the same amount of resources and has the same ecological footprint. As simple as that!!
And the fastest way to address the crisis is by turning off the switch and turning down the knob!
Actually this is a - to my tastes quite ideological looking - simplification of a very slightly more complex equation: total consumption is the sum of individual consumptions. "Per capita consumption" is just a derived value - derived from total consumption and number of people. It is not something you can change directly, because it doesn't really exist in the sense that consumption by an actual person does. You can decrease it only by decreasing individual consumptions. The most primitive approach is to order these values and cut off the clearly unnecessary part on the top end :-) (I know this is mostly just a rephrasing of your post, but I am really, really annoyed by all these scientific looking "equations".)
In addition to this, how does, say, military waste fit in this equation? Waste that comes from transport? Vanity crap like Bhurj Dubai? Of course it is technically possible (well, quite easy in fact), but it is the opposite to the intuitive meaning of the equation which basically says that waste scales directly with population. These are either "fixed costs" or something else, they should be accounted for in some other way imo. I don't think you consider the 0.005% or something like this of one Maverick missile you "consume" based on this equation your own "consumption". This kind of waste does not scale either with population or with real per capita consumption - unless you define per capita consumption as total consumption divided by population, but this will have nothing to do with *actual* personal consumption. Basically, it's built up the wrong way around.
Per capita consumption is a useful quantity that cannot be brushed aside lightly, even with all the differences in consumption levels. Just because the 1% in a rich country consume more than the 99%, it does NOT mean that the 99% in a rich country have the same or anywhere near the same ecological footprint as the 99% in a poorer country. These are real differences in consumption and the ecological destruction that goes with it.
Fairness, in my book, should be on a global basis. There is no valid reason for the hi-tech fishing trawlers of rich countries scouring the oceans all over the planet thousands of miles away from their borders. There's no reason that rainforests should be cut down to produce beef (and soy for beef production) and biofuels for some people in lands that are thousands of miles away. And NO, these are NOT JUST for the 1% in the rich countries. What the 99% consume does matter, just as what the military consumes and the monstrosities in Dubai. But there are also monstrosities much closer to home that cannot be justified as "essential" by any objective terms, and, let me repeat, these are for the consumption of the 99%, and these numbers will be reflected in the per capita figures.
And finally, it is up to the majority, or 99% if you will, in every country to bring the per capita consumption numbers to fair and sustainable levels. If it takes scaling down the empire and the military and getting rid of wasteful consumption, or changing the system, so be it. The 1% will not do it. It's up to the 99%. But if the 99% in a rich country will not confront their own large ecological and carbon footprints (on a global basis), then there is no hope, and all those who would refuse to confront these numbers are phony liberals, IMO. If it takes systemic change, so be it. But continuing with ecologically destructive consumption is unacceptable, no matter what kind of system or ideology is in place.
You've shocked me. Probably my naïveté, but still.
How long do you think it would take to reduce the human population to acceptable levels? And by what means? Do you think there is that much time to address the crisis on hand?
Post-partum sterilisation. 0.5 live birth per person, then snippity-snip, no exceptions for any reason. Any male that concurrently impregnates more than one female except by honest accident loses his dangly bits.
My quick back-of-the-envelope calculation says that we have a chance IFF we do that and also do all the rest: get rid of Capitalism and the psychopathocracies; focus on passive energy-demand reduction via insulation etc, focus on active energy reduction via terabit ethernet for everyone and a difference in the way we design things; and feed people while we educate them to abandon the worst bits of their cultures such as machismo and its various translations.
Hey, I didn't even mention reparations, you got off lucky. We can talk after these. Until that time, fuck off.
Jesus fuck. I really, really, really dislike people who think they are high enough above others to be able to control them like machines. Like phineas, the guy who said that engineers have built in anti-delusion circuits or something like that. Please, deal with your own shit first. The rest of the world would get some breathing room at least, and maybe an example to follow. But this kind of crap, especially from an American, is just unbearably fucking disgusting.
The only differences between reproducing and defecating are (a) the nature of the outcome and (b) reproducing is voluntary while defecating is ultimately not.
"Don't kid yourself. Of course you're religious -- you wouldn't make the mistake of trying to exalt the reproductive process otherwise."
When exactly did I do that? Quote me or admit that you're talking out of your ass.
As to when you tried to exalt reproduction, it was your response to my proposal for sterilisation. You trotted out all the standard silly-ass objections just as though we don't already have a million rules that bind us in every aspect of our lives for the benefit of the few.
I'll illustrate: we regulate when and where adults can defecate, but you would never mount a big objection in favor of people being able to defecate in public like dogs. Why not? Because regulating defecation doesn't get your religious prejudices all excited the way the idea of regulating reproduction does.
The ruling classes love lots of prole reproduction. It gives them big armies they can use to play their status games with and lots of hungry workers who are too cowed and needy to pull them to bits and hang what's left from lampposts.
No, I did not. Quote me. I am willing to admit I was an ass and have misinterpreted you because of Alcyon's post whom I respect (maybe because you're too tired to write a proper post and just wrote your conclusions - I know this happens to me when discussing the same thing for the twentieth time), but I never did what you claimed here.
My main objection is not at all with the idea that the world can't support an infinite number of people. It is clear that with time a society that can somehow keep a stable level of population needs to emerge. My main objection is with the simple rules that you propose and most importantly that they need a global totalitarian technocratic state to function. It is about handling people as machines and of course about forcing a dominating, centralised, technocratic organisation on the entire Earth. In my opinion (and I may be mistaken) this dovetails very nicely with the current trend towards centralised technocratic assembly line style systems: examples like geoengineering, GMO based agriculture and even test-based education (NCLB). As if assembly lines and TQM were the only way to do anything :-/ Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think trying to control everything consciously with these methods is what will really really fuck things up in the end.
In addition to this, I think my other points about the hypocrisy of the West trying to "help" the rest of the world (and most probably starting with them in implementation of these principles - regardless of who causes most of the actual waste and destruction) are also valid. I was pretty angry when I made them, but I still can not accept that the West is in this single issue is somehow acting for the benefit of everyone and not just itself. Maybe it's a mental defect, I have no idea, but I can't believe this without any proof. I also don't think the situation is so urgent that we can't wait for the proof to emerge.
Edit: I'm an idiot anyway. I respect both of them of course, but still.
You are speculating too much. Your parallel is also off (we are also regulating where and when people can have sex in a very similar way to regulating where and when they can shit; but we're not regulating how much they can shit just like we don't regulate (yet) how many kids they can have). I am also not religious, no matter how you want to prove it to me. I do have prejudices, but I think in this area I can control them quite well.
"The ruling classes love lots of prole reproduction. It gives them big armies they can use to play their status games with and lots of hungry workers who are too cowed and needy to pull them to bits and hang what's left from lampposts."
I agree with this but I think "the ruling classes" would actually prefer to have total control over reproduction - an ability to increase/decrease population as needed. For higher reasons of course. And I think any structure of society that has such externally enforced reproductive controls does in fact give this right to them on a silver platter. This is one of my basic problems with these types of ideas: centralisation of control over reproduction, e.g. the ability to decide who of the lower classes gets the right to more than one child (yep, I know that you said "without exceptions" - but you can't seriously believe that that's possible) sounds like a pretty powerful control mechanism to me.
A lot of the problems we are confronting are everyone's problems and so the solutions too should involve everyone, again, on the basis of fairness and justice. I think we can debate the proposals for solutions as long as there is this basic agreement on the need for fairness. Plus, some elementary logic.
The fact remains that there were more forests left in some regions, 400 years ago, than elsewhere, despite the fact that people have been living in these regions for thousands of years. That can be taken as an indication of different rates of deforestation, and possibly even a different kind of relationship with nature -- such as one that believes in "dominion" versus another that is more respectful or even fearful of "offending" certain "Gods".
Empires are wasteful. That has been the case for a long time. The Roman Empire alone was responsible for a great deal of deforestation in the Mediterranean.
From "Endangered Species Handbook",
>>Italy's southern forests were cut in Roman times, but north of the Adriatic Ocean, large expanses of beech and oak forests remained intact until the 16th century when they became the raw material for ships and galleys that sailed the Mediterranean waging battles and trading. Enormous amounts of lumber were needed to build these ships. When an exact replica of a galley was reconstructed a few years ago, 650 mature trees were required: 50 beech trees were needed for oars, 300 pines and firs for planks and spars, and 300 mature oaks for hull timbers.
In 1571, Venetian fleets battled the Turkish fleet which had been attacking and looting their ships. The 500 vessels in the Venetian and Turkish fleets had required the felling of more than a quarter-million mature trees. Soon thereafter, the building of Venetian galleys came to an end for lack of trees, and shipbuilding moved elsewhere in Europe where trees were still abundant.<<
Extreme inequality within a society also leads to deforestation as people are pushed out of the commons. From Wikipedia,
>>In the wake of the wars of conquest of the 17th century, Irish antagonism towards England was aggravated by the economic situation of Ireland in the 18th century. Throughout the century English trade with Ireland was the most important branch of English overseas trade. The Protestant Anglo-Irish absentee landlords drew off some £800,000 in the early part of the century, rising to £1 million, in an economy that had a GDP of about £4 million. Completely deforested of timber for exports (usually to the Royal Navy) and for a temporary iron industry in the course of the 17th century, Irish estates turned to the export of salt beef, pork, butter, and hard cheese through the slaughterhouse and port city of Cork, which supplied England, the British navy and the sugar islands of the West Indies.<<
Also from Wikipedia
"Norman F. Cantor's summary of the effects of late medieval deforestation applies equally well to Early Modern Europe:
"Europeans had lived in the midst of vast forests throughout the earlier medieval centuries. After 1250 they became so skilled at deforestation that by 1500 they were running short of wood for heating and cooking."<<
Here's a take on the "underlying causes of deforestation" from the "World Rainforest Movement" website:
>>Ecuador offers an example which applies not only to most other Amazonian countries but also to many other Southern countries with deep forests. Since the 1970s there has been a great influx of farmers into the Ecuadorian Amazon, one of the most precious forest areas in the world. Most of these farmers came from the Andes and coastal regions of the country, where they were faced with landlessness, unemployment, and land degradation. Migration was strongly encouraged by the Ecuadorian Government, with a provision for land titles for plots of 45-50 hectares for the migrants. As farmers ran the risk of losing their land title if they did not turn it into agricultural or other "useful" land, deforestation was more or less obligatory.<<
My point is that there are factors other than overpopulation alone that lead to deforestation and species loss and all kinds of environmental destruction.
From an "Interview with Sea Shepherd Founder Captain Paul Watson"
>>"(The pig is) basically the world’s largest aquatic predator. It consumes more fish than all the world’s sharks put together. The domestic housecat eats more tuna than all the world’s seals put together. We’re just pulling fish out of the ocean to convert it into fish meal for the raising of livestock, for pigs primarily. Sometimes cows, but generally, it’s the pig and the chicken who are eating most of the seafood. And also, raising fish on fish farms, it takes 70 fish caught in the ocean to raise one salmon on a farm. It’s an incredible waste of life in the oceans."<<
From the essay "The Meat Industry....Is it worth it?"
>>Land is greatly affected by the meat industry. The percentage of U.S. agricultural land used to produce meat is 56%. The strains on land include topsoil erosion and depletion of forested areas. The percentage of U.S topsoil loss directly associated with livestock raising is 85%. In Mexico 37 million acres of forest have been destroyed since 1987 to provide additional grazing land for cattle. The cattle industry is a driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rainforests. Until 1994, in the Amazon the total deforested area was of 450, 000 square Km. The current rate of species extinction due to destruction of tropical rainforest amounts to one thousand per year. Various species of plants live in the tropical rainforest, which can be used for their medicinal properties. These plants need yet to be discovered. We can not afford to risk their extinction.<<
So, would you attribute such problems too to merely human overpopulation? Do you think people in all the countries feed tuna to their cats?
Continued below
I agree with you, and I would REALLY like to think that we DO have a chance. And yes, I also agree that some SERIOUS efforts will be needed to bring about a major reduction in human population, by natural means that are completely fair. Human beings are just one species out of countless number of species and it's about time to relinquish some areas for other life forms. But first, it would be necessary to STOP species loss due to human over-consumption.
My whole argument was about prioritizing from the point of view of the biggest causes of deforestation and the actions that would yield the fastest results that would be acceptable to people of conscience.
I'll tell you how I did the calculations; you tell me whether the methodology looks okay (I'm usually hopeless with numbers).
If we all work like billy hell in solidarity, we can take over the US government (and thus, more or less, the world's) by 2020, which I therefore chose as the benchmark year.
I made a number of simplifying presumptions, chosen to avoid making the problem look smaller than it is. For example, I've presumed nobody dies until age 100, that each new cohort will be produced by the cohort then at age 20, that the sex ratio can be ignored, that no couple will produce more than one child per birth, and that all couples will choose to reproduce.
Taking the projected world pop for 2020 from the Census's site, I rounded up each 4-year cohort to whole millions, and dropped them into a spreadsheet. Stepping from 2020 to 2100 in 4-year increments, I aged each cohort, and created the new cohort for that timeslice by dividing the then-20-24yo cohort by 2.
Using those projections and assumptions, the population starts at 7.595G in 2020 and peaks at 8.855G in 2032
It doesn't drop below the 2020 level until 2044, when it's down to 7.41G.
It's still nearly 6G in 2050, but by 2060 we're past the worst and it's down to 3G, last seen 52 years ago in 1960.
In 2074 it goes below 1G (906M) for the first time since ca. 1820
By 2080 we're down to a level that should be sustainable while Earth heals: 527M, not seen since the start of global European imperialism in the 17th c. That's when we can raise the allotment back to 2 live births before snippity-snip.
If we don't start til 2030, everything gets pushed out 10 years, and the bulge is longer and more than 700M bigger
If we bugger around til 2040 before starting, we don't reach the ca. 500M level til 2100, and maybe we don't get to choose how we reach it, or even whether, because the bulge would be 1.5G bigger (10G), and we wouldn't approach even the 2020 level until 2064 and the 3G level not until 2080.
So our critical path is about 70 years long, starting now.
You and I disagree, I think (hope), only on the issue of priority, and perhaps not even that really.
My argument is that everything is of equal importance in any practical sense. We must reduce consumption in the west because of greenhousing, and we must reduce population everywhere for reasons of simple fairness and because of basics (water, food, deforestation for ag/living space, and especially our predation of non-humans and their habitats).
We mustn't focus on consumption alone because our population growth rate is non-linear and we're already on the edge, and we mustn't focus on pop alone because other cultures are still dependent on pop growth for old-age security and there's a helluva lot of soul-destroying misery around the world every day because of hunger, disease, and violence.
(And you're right about me being a 'she': Mairead is a very ordinary and somewhat popular name for girls in Scotland and Ireland, especially the Gaelic-speaking parts, and is usually reckoned to be the equivalent of "Margaret")