environment. biofuel

In an article by Ian MacKinnon The Guardian report today on the scam which is destroying habitat in Borneo and Indonesia at an alarming rate. The cause? Demand for the Oil Palm to make BioDiesel in the West.

“In reality it’s over for the tiger, the elephant and the orangutan,” said Mr Smits, who founded the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. “Their entire lowland forest habitat is essentially gone already. We find orangutan burned, or their heads cut off. Hunters are paid 150,000 rupiah [£8.30] {$16.41} for the right hand of an orangutan to prove they’ve killed them.”

Maybe no war, but how do all the drivers of biodiesel Benz's here in Asheville feel about rainforest destruction, I wonder.

crossposted from left on 49

This past February the world community of scientists published a report on global warming under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report concluded that global warming is “unequivocal” and human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.

While the rest of the world moves on and is rapidly trying to find solutions for this global environmental crisis, a few republicans pretend nothing is going on. One of them, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), even thinks global warming is caused by farting.

So with most people being worried about global warming, except for a few republicans who also still believe that Earth is flat, folks are looking for solutions to be a little more earth and climate friendly. A lot of them seem to think that one solution for environmentally friendly fuel is corn. They couldn't be more wrong.

I understand there is a WHOLE lot of pig poop in eastern North Carolina and the people want the pigs to either stop pooping or for the owners of the pooping pigs to do something with the poop other than run it into large pits that they call Hog Lagoons.

North Carolina holds second place among the states in hog production. Ten years ago residents in the area got the state to impose a moratorium on these lagoons that are later tapped by the farmers to spray on the fields as fertilizer. This is not at all the best solution since the seepage from the lagoons and then the fields contaminate the ground water, but it is certainly the cheapest and farmers are reluctant to look for other methods of disposal and/or use of the pig manure. Now the moratorium is coming up for renewal and the residents are asking the state to make it permanent.