The Reality Of 'Biofuels'

by Trek1.0 Sun Aug 26, 2007 10:19

Thanks for the article. The conditions are appalling, particularly the requirement for workers to reach a bosses led target before they're paid (12 tons a day in one region, double the 1980 target).

Coupled with the child labour, respiratory problems from emissions from burning and massive pesticide use (the product is not for human consumption so I presume they just drown the stuff in it?) the wages or lack thereof....etc etc it's almost like a version of the Belgian Congo under Leopold.

"According to the sociologist Francisco de Oliveira, the cutters' average lifespan is less than that of colonial slaves.6"

It's not bad enough that at the other side of the equation you have millions of Brazilians going hungry while we drive around in their exported grain and/or use it to feed our cattle in an extremely inefficient and iniquitous relationship. But hey the needs of those without the euros are not counted, right?

And one important point about not knowing where the agrofuel came from. The WTO strictures (trade court rules, pre-eminent over 'quaint' democratic constraints) would prevent the source from being known on the label, and even if it was they would certainly try and prevent attempts at not importing agrofuel from rainforests in Brazil or say palm oil from similar SE Asian forests .

Indeed the way things have gone, the current global market ideology would have prevented the ban in relation to apartheid South Africa. No human or environmental concerns can stand in the way of the undemocratic, neoliberal form of globalisation.

The reality of agrofuel is that it is, quite possibly, the best, most efficient, way to accelerate global warming whilst pretending to prevent it.

From GRAIN,

No to the agrofuel craze!

GRAIN has just published a special issue of Seedling which focuses on biofuels, or as we like to call them, agrofuels - over 30,000 words of indepth analysis from around the world.

In the process of gathering material from colleagues and social movements around the world, we have discovered that the stampede into agrofuels is causing enormous environmental and social damage, much more than we realised earlier. Precious ecosystems are being destroyed and hundreds of thousands of indigenous and peasant communities are being thrown off their land.

http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=68

http://www.grain.org/front/