Climate Threat From the Soil

[Drachir]

It seems humanity is incredibly attempt at finding new ways to add to the world's greenhouse gases. In Indonesia huge peat fires caused by deforestation are dumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that Indonesia now ranks third in global emissions. The problem is that in Indonesia it is more worthwhile economically to destroy forests than to save them. Once again it appears that economic gain trumps ecology.

washingtonpost.com

 

[skeptical]

Part of Indonesia's actions stem from Europe.
Europeans are so enamoured of biofuels that they import lots of palm oil from Indonesia. Indonesia cuts down tropical rainforest, and exposes the underlying peat in order to plant oil palms. You could blame this one on Kyoto....

 

[Ursa major]

Recently there was, apparently, a small fuss about some UK government ministers here in the UK supposedly "supporting" a reduction in animal husbandry (as it would reduce greenhouse gas output and give a healthier diet). It was alleged that DEFRA (our food and farming ministry) was not consulted. Someone suggested (possibly maliciously) that meat consumption would not go down, but the destruction of "virgin" lands in, say, Brasil, might increase in order to create more ranches to supply the demand.


(I've hedged around this a bit because I haven't had time to find what I would consider to be a reliable source for this - I can't really quote what may have been a "What the Papers Say" item in a Radio Four news programme. The original paper was in The Lancet.)