The next green gold rush

By Julian Sudre

The fever of discomfort has taken a derisive turn when oil started to become a red-button issue; a shift of strategy produced undertones of remedies and revolutions in the way we would pioneer the formation of a green, renewable energy.

Interest in agrofuel has gone from a casual trot to a full-on gallop of thoroughbred corporate activity. And today, governments seem to be more interested in feeding our cars than us. Such a scheme is beyond the realm of possibilities knowing that it would require 25.9m hectares of crops to move our vehicles with biodiesel. Only 5.7m hectares are in the UK. A blatant case that demonstrates how the markets respond to money as opposed to our needs and how facile solutions to global warming and carbon emissions are disguised as sustainable energies.

Industrial agriculture is responsible for 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and agrofuels need more nitrate fertiliser hence they emit more nitrous oxide which is nearly 300 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. In terms of biodiversity, we are seeing a shift towards GM crops and trees which poses risks in soil erosion, water depletion and more industrial monocultures. What's more, in the US and in Europe agrofuels operations rely heavily on subsidies and they probably would not survive without them; subsidies have given rise to competition across the world between crops for food and crops for fuel, causing havoc in poor countries through increased food prices and reducing global food reserves.

Rainforests being the next targets, their eradication for compulsive acres of oil palm and soya and sugar-cane plantations is turning local farmers into slave-like serf of unscrupulous policies. Food sovereignty and destruction of natural ecosystems and the displacement of million of small farmers are the causal factors of such dynamics. Policymakers know fittingly how to brush under the carpet of capitalism the thorny arguments of food security and food displacement in return for "principles" that are a bigger bang for the buck of large-scale multinational corporations.

The IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Chane - highlighted that peatland destructions caused more emissions than deforestation which the latter brings about 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even though the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food vocalised his stance by remarking that it was a crime against humanity to produce biofuels.

The agrofuel process has developed far too fast without having drawn up any measures to foresee any complication ahead in time. Controls should be in place before corporations and governments push ahead. We are at a critical stage where we are talking about expropriation on an unprecedented scale with the privatisation of communal land. Now, more than 100 groups have asked for a moratorium on EU subsidies for agrofuels. Unfortunately, financial sectors have seen the agrofuel boom as an opportunity to inject liquidity and blood-money by transfusion to ill market economies. The World Bank quickly jumped on the bandwagon announcing that it has potentially 10bn dollars to underwrite agrofuel development. Hence, the systematic leech-like knee-jerk approach of private sector investors to succumb to temptation.

On closer inspection, our civilization has become green with the wrong envy and impulsively is cutting its nose to spite its face. Perhaps when the masses swell up against the dictatorship of our economics that a ray of light will proffer hope for sustainability.