Huh. I always thought there was something fishy in the whole ‘biodiesel’ thing – Monbiot explains in last Tuesday’s Guardian. (via. the aforementioned InkyCircus).
Jonathan Sanderson’s weblog, since 2001.
Huh. I always thought there was something fishy in the whole ‘biodiesel’ thing – Monbiot explains in last Tuesday’s Guardian. (via. the aforementioned InkyCircus).
That usefully talks about issues w.r.t. palm oil plantations, it doesn’t mention the controversy (possibly in his previous articles) about the bio-diesel crops which can be grown in the west and the degree to which some are dependent on fertilizer (and agricultural techniques) which are themselves dependent on fossil fuel (to the extent that you may use more than 1litre fossil fuel in the production of 1 litre of bio-diesel but simply not notice because the costs currently are so low and fossil fuel in the inputs so widely dispersed)… the only sensible way to use fossil fuels now are to build systems which drastically reduce society’s energy demand or alternatively which will provide energy while not themselves being dependent on a cheap-energy economy for ongoing function (or decommissioning!). The only big project transport project I find interesting from that point of view would be the Transrapid Ultraspeed project for the UK – http://www.500kmh.com/ and I’ve been a supporter of the idea of having a Glasgow-Edinburgh tester link for some time… anyway… I’m straying off biodiesel. Martin