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Varanasi is considered the holiest place on the Ganges River

Please consider them an endangered species,

these people who still have this faith, this living relationship with the river,” pleads Veer Bhadra Mishra, Mahant of the Sankat Mochan Temple of Varanasi, a retired hydraulic engineer and head of the Civil Engineering Department at Banaras Hindu University. “If birds can be saved, if plants can be saved, let this species of people be saved by granting them holy water.”

Veer Bhadra Mishra A Mahant who wants to clean the holy Ganges

But this priest, coming from the riverside laboratory, knows that the Ganges or Ganga River’s holy water must be cleaned before it can be granted to anyone. For almost 25 years, he has led a political campaign, a scientific development project and a holy crusade to save India’s most sacred river.

When his father died, Mishra was 14 years old. He thus became Mahant of the sect of Hinduism that follows sixteenth-century divine poet Tulsi Das, author of the “Ramayana,” one of the most revered Hindu texts. To devotees and to all Hindus– over a billion people worldwide– the Ganga is a living mother goddess, a symbol of purity.

Originally Banaras (Varanasi) was known as Kashi, the holy city from Hindu scriptures. Only here, for 7 kilometers, the river turns northward, back towards her source. It is said that the river fell in love with the city and nearly turned back here. The half loop northwards creates the curved bank where the ghats (stairs close to the river) stand today.

Ganga flows some 2,500 km from the Himalayan Mountains to the Bay of Bengal. Her basin is inhabited by nearly 400 million people, making it the most populous river basin in the world. Each sunrise brings 60,000 people, come to bathe and pray at the various ghats of Varanasi. It is believed that if a person’s ashes are placed in the Ganga after cremation, they will go to Nirvana (Heaven).

Prayers along the Ganges

Therefore, human ashes, and often corpses of those who cannot afford cremation, are immersed in the river. And although the river is sacred, it is used practically for washing clothes and animals, the disposal of chemical waste from textile dying and brass making industries, and solid waste like plastic bags, flower garlands etc. Yet the biggest cause of pollution is untreated sewage. 88% of the pollution comes from 27 cities from along the banks of the Ganga.

Dr. Veer Bhadra Mishra is the co-founder of the Sankat Mochan Foundation (SMF), a secular, non-governmental organization at Tulsi Ghat in Varanasi dedicated to cleaning and protecting the Ganga, especially from sewage since 1982.

The Indian government initiated the first stage of an unrelated Ganga Action Plan (GAP) to clean the river in 1984. Three sewage treatment plants and an electric crematorium were built. Although the major part of the GAP was completed in 1991, testing shows no significant improvement in water quality, not to mention major design flaws, including the backflow of sewage into religious bathing areas, pollution of groundwater throughout the district and backflow of sewage into the streets of the city. The electric crematorium is now used for 80% of cremations, but is plagued by frequent breakdowns which again result in bodies in the water.

The former director of the GAP himself, K.C. Sivaramakrisnan, said, “In spite of working on this plan for 10-15 years, I do not see the levels of maturity increasing.” The Sankat Mochan Foundation established the Swatcha (clean) Ganga campaign, with funding and support primarily from the United States, Sweden, Britain and Australia. With this outside support Dr. Mishra is able to analyze water quality of the Ganga.

The riverside Swatcha Ganga Research Laboratory monitors water quality daily. Local villages are also suffering from the effects of extreme sewage pollution in their water supply, both from the river and well water. The recent tests indicate faecal coliform levels in the wells of theses villages ranges from 21,000 to 80,000 colonies per 100ml. The safe level for drinking water is zero, for bathing water, less than 150 colonies per 100ml.

Faecal coliform are a bacteria found in the intestinal system of warm-blooded animals; their presence in large numbers indicates pollution by sewage contamination.

Every morning in Varanasi 60,000 worshipers bathe in the Ganges

The statistics for the ghats of Varanasi are not much better. Here the fecal coliform count at times is up to 3,000 times the level acceptable for human beings.

People who are dependent on the river for their water supply often become sick from drinking the water, with hepatitis, typhoid or cholera. According to WorldWatch Institute in Washington D.C., eight out of ten people in India suffer waterborne stomach disorders at some time in their lives.

The Sankat Mochan Foundation has mobilized volunteers from all over the world. Aside from the laboratory, they have led a large-scale international awareness campaign, utilizing television, radio, print media and the internet. Dr. Mishra has traveled the world learning about the plight of rivers and how activists and scientists have tried to clean them; he hopes that his work for the Ganga will inspire others to clean the waterways they depend on for life.

Among others, he has worked with Thames21, an environmental group in Great Britain. Swatcha Ganga Environmental Education Centre was started by Oz GREEN and the Sankat Mochan Foundation In 1998. It is a direct people to people project which is funded by Australians. They have provided equipment, training and environmental education resources like water testing kits to schools and community groups. The Asia Foundation, based in San Francisco has also provided core funding for the Sankat Mochan Foundation’s cleaning project.

THE GANGES / BRAHMAPUTRA WATERSHED

Varanasi, in the heart of the Ganges Watershed, is also the epicenter of a new scientific & spiritual movement to eliminate pollution from this sacred river Yellow areas = elevation over 200 meters Map Scale: 100 pixels = 500 kilometers

Since 2001, campaigners have also cleaned up litter, debris and corpses of humans and animals in the river and along all 77 ghats with their own hands. Numerous sources credit them with improving the situation by one third. The Sankat Mochan Foundation has also built tubewells in six neighboring villages, providing clean drinking water to residents who were previously ill from drinking the water of the Ganga.

With the help of William Oswald, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Mishra has developed a plan to clean the Ganga. In his own words, it is “a cost-effective and safe system for cleaning the Varanasi stretch.” It is called an advanced integrated wastewater oxidation pond system.

The non-electric wastewater system would store sewage for 45 days in biological oxidation ponds, using bacteria and algae to eliminate pesticides, heavy metals and deadly coliforms, cleansing the entire 7 kilometer stretch. The system would not only purify water but could be used to irrigate farmland and grow fish. The ponds would be built outside the city limits.

Powered by gravity, the system would save an estimated US$ 55 million annually compared to electrical solutions – which are impractical in Varanasi anyway due to frequent power cuts.

Foundation Members have spoken to the thousands of residents along the river front and in the villages nearby, and more than 6,500 local people have signed a petition demanding the interceptor be built. Over 100,000 people have agreed to help build the dam walls for the oxidation ponds, as an act of religious devotion dedicated to cleaning the river. Nearly 10,000 local residents have volunteered to build the type of non-electrical wastewater treatment system advocated by the campaign. The Varanasi City Corporation has accepted the plans and the funds are available (about 40 million sterling) but, according to the SMF, the Uttar Pradesh state government is behaving unconstitutionally and blocking Varanasi City Corporation’s plan to clean the Ganga.

In 1994, the 74th amendment to the Indian constitution was adopted, guaranteeing the city’s right to determine and implement environmental policies. While the political standoff continues, the river and its people continue to suffer.

Clean Ganga Day 2004 was held in New Delhi, the political capital of India, on the 27 th of August. The political and environmental issues were discussed by international diplomats and activists.

Veer Bhadra Mishra Scientist & Holy Man

Addressing participants on Clean Ganga Day, organized by Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan Foundation, the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission Robert O. Blake said, “The American people are proud to support your ongoing work to protect this beautiful waterway.”

Although Dr. Mishra is an engineer, it is his faith and his heart that keeps him going in this lifelong plight. He says, “We have to clean all the rivers, and only then our hearts will be happy. This is what I feel. It cannot be clean just by technology, just by setting up the right kind of infrastructure, there has to be an intermixing of culture, faith, science and technology. We have that kind of living relationship with the river. You [Western societies] have the best technology. So both the societies need to interact with each other to take care of these rivers.”

Dr. Mishra was recognized on the United Nations Environmental Program’s Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992 at Rio, Brazil, and was a TIME Magazine “Hero of the Planet” recipient in 1999.

Rather than claim visionary status, however, Mishra chooses to raise the standard for all of us: “This is not visionary,” he says. “It is simply essential. To aim for less would not be worthy of us as human beings.”

To help with the Swatcha Ganga Campaign, or for more information contact:

Telephone: 91-542-313884

Fax: 91-542-314278

Postal address

Tulsi Ghat, Varanasi – 221 005, INDIA

Electronic mail

General Information: vbmishra@altavista.net

In Australia: ozgreen@ozgreen.org.au

About the Authors: Brook and Gaurav Bhagat are writers and independent filmmakers based in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.

Teak planted around mother trees Finca Leola, Costa Rica

In spite of what we’ve done, no matter how much noise we make about it, we are not slowing down deforestation. It keeps escalating. To explain why, as I have come to understand things since moving to Costa Rica to do reforestation, let me start by telling a story. It could be set in almost any country in the tropics.

There was a farmer in a place where there was land for the taking. All that was necessary was to go out and clear the forest and plant a crop. He worked very hard, as cutting down the trees was backbreaking and the climate was hot and humid. Often he and his neighbors would just burn the trees. They weren’t all that valuable, since the jungle went on seemingly forever. Life was a struggle, with the poor farmer on one side and the animals and plants of the forest on the other.

The farmer had a big family with many sons and daughters, and of course, so did his neighbors. When his sons grew up, well, there was always the forest where they could go and carve out their own farms, adding to the land that their father would leave them. Eventually, as chainsaws and other power equipment came into use, the work became easier, but it still was very hard. It did make it possible for the farmer’s descendents to clear more land much quicker. Also, people started offering to buy the trees, producing added income. They were not paying what the trees were worth, but to the family, it represented a great deal of money.

Later, large logging companies formed that created roads and rapidly cleared the forest. The expanding family only had to go to a piece of cleared land and start a farm. Often they would use it to graze cattle year-round, raising cheap beef for richer countries of the world where the grass dies off every winter.

After several generations, the forests had noticeably shrunk, and there was no more free land. Now, whatever lands a family owned were divided among the offspring, but the families were still large. Even though the few remaining forests were protected by law, families living around them poached wood during the night to provide for their needs. Things were very hard, but the worst was to come.

Deforested Hillsides Cannot Hold the Rains

A major hurricane swept through the area, bringing strong winds and an incredible amount of water. In the past, the forest had buffered the wind and helped lessen the impact of the flooding so that even though crops might be lost, few people died. The roots of the trees held the soil in place and slowed down the rush of water – but now the forest was gone.

With the land bared of trees, thousands died in the floods and landslides. The farmer could not have known, but when he started clearing the land for his farm, he was setting events in place that would wipe out his lineage. Because he did not understand all that trees do, he removed their protection from his family.

The outcome of this story is based on what happened in badly deforested Haiti during September 2004. Although we don’t have to worry about hurricanes in our inland location in Costa Rica, the country has seen its share of homes and buildings wiped out by mudslides, and some people have been buried in them.

You may never have cut down a tree, so you may feel that you haven’t contributed to deforestation. How much harm could you personally have caused by your use of nonrenewable wood products and the amount of carbon you send out into the atmosphere? Not that much, really. But multiply yourself by billions, and the forests cannot keep up. The harsh reality is that they are not keeping up.

To illustrate the point, look at the photo below that I took in our neighborhood. It’s a line of leaf-cutter ants. They aren’t very big, but all tropical gardeners dread them. Leaf-cutters harvest leaves and take them back to their mound to cultivate into the fungi that they eat. You can tell where they’ve been, because they cut a swath through any grassy area along their trail and leave the plants bare where they do their harvesting. Many a gardener has left his place for a couple of days and come back to find his vegetable plantings wiped out. No single one of them does very much damage, but as a colony, they devastate a large area.

Leaf Cutter Ants – No single ant does much damage

The world population is much like the leaf-cutters. Each one of us singly does very little damage. The office where I am writing this is paneled in hardwood. To panel the entire house we live in, the builder used probably three good-size trees. Not really much of an issue, if it weren’t for our sheer numbers. Just in Costa Rica, since WW II, the population has gone from 800,000 to more than four million.

In the early 1970s, in the small town of San Miguel where our partner grew up, a mill was built. It used a stream to turn the wheel. Now, it looks silly and sad. There’s the mill, with a wheel that doesn’t even come close to touching the water. In fact, there isn’t enough flow of water in the stream to turn the wheel, even if it did touch. I assure you, they did not build a mill where there was not enough water, but today, because of the loss of the forest, the stream is less than half its former size.

Living in the northeastern United States, I was far removed from seeing such effects of deforestation. Go look down any street and visualize it as dense forest. It probably once was, but how often do you think about it? I know I didn’t. Years ago, we lived in a very cold part of the United States. We needed to heat our home, which had a wood stove. For us to heat the home with oil would have run about 200 dollars per month, or most of our income. So, a friend offered to let us cut wood on his property. For two summers, I cut about 8 cords of wood and split it so that we could heat our house. Besides the cost of hauling the wood and the fuel for the chainsaw, the wood was free for the taking, and I never worried about taking it.

Now, living in Costa Rica, I hear constantly about landslides and floods and see a lot of muddy rivers due to severe runoff. When I see waterways that come from headwaters still surrounded by forest, the rivers and streams are crystal clear. We have a river on Finca Leola, and whether it is clear or dirty does not depend solely on what we do on the plantation, but what our neighbors upstream are doing also. Costa Rica has enacted laws that no tree may be cut within 50 meters of a stream or river. But with 25% of wood harvested here being done so illegally, the waterways are being further compromised. Believe it or not, Costa Rica, where much of the climate is rainforest, is having problems supplying drinking water.

When trees are gone, the land washes away

The damage to the hillsides and waterways in places like Haiti and Costa Rica may be the most visible results of deforestation, but the worldwide impact of population growth is staggering. Even though the rate may be slowing down, it still is projected to reach 9 billion people. At least 7.2 million hectares (18 million acres) of ancient forest are already being cut each year to provide things like flooring, underlay, paneling, furniture, and cabinetry.

There are other, lower-profile yet global areas of impact. One online discussion group for shipbuilders was trying to come up with a suitable wood they could use that isn’t endangered. Their conclusion? It’s impossible to be a shipbuilder and be “green.” Then there are the miles and miles of coastal boardwalks, traditionally made from a tropical hardwood tree sometimes called ipe. Rainforest species grow scattered, not in stands, so to get to just one ipe and harvest it typically requires leveling as much as an acre of forest.

If you live an average lifestyle in the USA, the amount of carbon dioxide you produce per year is 40,000 pounds, according to the EPA. This is an accumulation of all the activities in your life, not just breathing. The bulk of it is from using fossil fuels to generate electricity and run your car. The US “ant colony” of 5% of the world’s population is responsible for 25% of the carbon dioxide released in the world. Carbon dioxide has to be tied back up (sequestered) somehow, and we’ve already reached the point where the shrinking forests can’t do the job. Yet in 1990, 100 acres per minute of forest were being cut down, and by 2004, that figure rose to 149 acres per minute.

To the farmer in my opening story, the forest seemed inexhaustible, encroaching. But nothing on this earth is inexhaustible. Only about half the world’s original forests are left.

#1 – PASTURE & REMNANT FOREST

Ready to reforest: Pastureland with forest to 50 meters from river; also some large (mother) trees in fields.

It doesn’t take very long to cut down a tree, but it takes decades to replace it. Reforestation is not happening fast enough. And other than in national parks and forest preserves, it is not normally a long-term proposition. The reason is that, eventually, the owner of reforested land will have to sell it or pass it on, and it may go to someone who doesn’t feel that conservation and reforestation are all that important. Trees often outlive people, and someone may eventually yield to the temptation to harvest them unless they are protected somehow.

In Costa Rica, until only about 15 years ago, you could secure free land by improving it. The easiest way to improve the land was to chop down the forest. The forest was considered wasted or unused land. In fact, Costa Rica had to pass laws to prevent squatters from having the right to take over land that was being allocated for reforestation, because it seemed to them to be neglected.

Our goal on the Finca Leola S.A. tree plantation is to move back in the other direction: to go from pasture to perpetual forest, with a plantation as the first cycle, or interim step. Returning farmland to forest takes creative thinking for those of us with limited resources. We have a two-phase plan: taking pasture to plantation, then plantation to perpetual forest. The first phase will pay for the second, and the second phase will pay to maintain itself.

#2 – TREE PLANTATION

Fields filled in with rows of plantation trees; space has been left around mother trees & forest.

In the plantation phase, we grow trees for ourselves and others as an investment. You can find out on our Web site how to have us raise tropical hardwoods for you and help you sell the wood. We are taking this approach because in this way we can afford to secure more farms around us for reforestation. After the plantation trees are harvested, the land will revert to forest. It’s as if the trees themselves are working to bring back their habitat.

Already, because of owning land for our current plantation, we are expanding the natural forest around the rivers, streams, and swamps. Also, we have done a very unusual thing: All of the big, lone trees in the middle of the pastures, ojoche, laurel, corteza, and other rare species, have been left standing and the plantation trees planted around them. This means that we are preserving the seed stock, or mother trees. There are about 200 mature trees in the areas that we are planting. Some will need to be harvested over the years due to their age, but most will still be there in 25 years, bigger than ever.

#3 – HARVEST SOME TREES

Half the plantation trees harvested; native trees replace plantation trees; mother trees bigger; forest spreads.

So, when you purchase trees with us, you are doing more than just providing some reforestation now; you are permanently preserving 350 square meters of land for every block of 100 trees. You are helping us create a perpetual forest. Perpetual means that, unlike most forests, this one will have people who will always protect it and care for it. It will be maintained for wildlife and for the environment, with trees only being removed as needed to improve the health of the forest. The wood from these trees will be sold to provide a living for those who work taking care of the forest. This is not a new idea. In Central Europe this is called Dauerwald. The Dauerwald is about 200 years old. There are people in the United States doing it as well. You can read about one example at http://www.menominee.edu/sdi/SchabelAndPecore.html.

To offset your personal 40,000 pounds of CO2 production, you would need to plant 1 hectare of trees (on Finca Leola, that’s about 800 trees). If you were to do this, a reasonable expected return for your investment would be about $800,000 in hardwood sold, reducing the demand for wood from the forests. Then the new piece of forest you made would always be there, providing carbon sequestering for you and for future generations. Of course, most of can’t start by investing in 800 trees at once. It is Finca Leola’s mission to make it possible for anyone to reduce their CO2 debt, so we have set up payment plans and quantity discounts that are retroactive. By enabling you to make a good investment and at the same time offset the carbon dioxide you are producing by living, we hope to boost reforestation efforts in a very practical way.

#4 – NEW FOREST BEGINS

Plantation trees 100% harvested; mother tree seedlings transplanted to open space; forest spreads.

The owners of Finca Leola S.A. are currently working on placing all of the land that we have purchased in a land trust, where the use of the land will be forever defined by a conservation easement. We will no longer own the land ourselves, but like everyone who owns trees that we are taking care of, we will own only the trees that were planted as an investment.

We, the people of the world, didn’t understand what would happen if we beat back the forests, clearing large sections of land for growing crops and grazing cattle without leaving enough trees in between. We thought of it as progress, an example of human ingenuity. Later, many of us looked at the loss of forest as an aesthetic loss and nothing more.

Now we can see the landslides; the dwindling, muddied streams; and the loss of animal species that play a role in the balance of ecosystems. We know about the effects of releasing excess carbon into the atmosphere. Now we can understand why we need to find the means to encourage the regrowth of forests that will continue far into the future. What was thoughtlessly destroyed must be thoughtfully restored.

As for us, when we became concerned about deforestation, we were still the same people with the same needs as before. We need to provide for our retirement, so we have to invest wisely. We decided to do it at the same time as investing in something that would make a difference. In addition to securing our retirement, by turning all of the land we own into a perpetual forest, we will secure it from ever again being used for anything besides sustainable forest. Because this reforestation land will be set aside in trust for the future, when people invest with us, they will know that they are doing something not just short-term, but they are making a permanent change to the amount of rainforest in the world.

We all have the same choice: to invest in things based solely on how profitable they are, or to include in the decision whether the investment is helping the future of all our lives.

In the time it took you to read this article, the world lost about 1,500 acres of trees.

Thanks to the Rainforest Action Network for many of the statistics used in this article. For more on rates of rainforest loss, select Rainforests from the menu on the www.ran.org home page and go to Fact Sheets. Also on the site is a list of ways to help.

Caribou on Alaska’s North Slope

Life without cars is impossible.

If you are one of the few without a personal vehicle it is likely you take trips on the subway, bus, train or ferry. Ask almost anyone in the United States about their day and it will involve a car trip along one of the millions of crisscrossing streets that lace America like a giant spider web. Cars rush along the pavement filled with drivers on their way to pick up groceries, take the kids to school, go to work or to go on long road trips.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, there are “70 million more drivers on the road driving about 113 million more vehicles today than there were 30 years ago. Over this same period of time, drivers have increased the miles they each drive by about 44 percent, which means that vehicles traveled per year had increased by about 145 percent since 1970.” The increased need for vehicles has come with an increased need for fuel.

Unfortunately, fuel isn’t the most environmentally friendly energy source. Anyone who has walked behind a car and choked on the exhaust fumes knows it can’t be good for the air. Soon after the first cars left behind the noxious black smoke it became obvious that fuels needed some refining. It didn’t take long for the gas industry to develop cleaner technology and fuels. Modern, unleaded fuels are less hazardous and less of a pollutant now. In fact, the U.S EPA [(Environmental Protection Agency)] found that vehicle emissions have declined 41% since 1970 despite the increased amount of vehicles on the road. However, that does not mean that all problems associated with fuel have been solved. Far from it.

The Alpine Oilfield in Northern Alaska Where it all begins

A major issue is the process of retrieving crude oil from the earth. Pipe leaks, accidents during transport and spills are still commonplace. The American Petroleum Institute claims that many steps are taken to “assure that oil and natural gas can be produced with minimal environmental impact.” API also provides some examples: “Directional drilling technology allows us to access oil and gas resources that underlie a sensitive area, such as a wetland, from an area nearby where a drilling rig can safely be located. In the Arctic, companies build ice roads and ice drilling pads that melt away in the spring. Companies have substantially reduced the amount of land disturbance required for drilling a well and by drilling several wells from a single location (with directional or multi-lateral technology) require a much smaller number of sites to achieve the same level of production.”

Yet even with impressive technological advancements in the drilling industry, oil rigs and human intrusions still alter the environment and often devastate habitats. Brian Moore, legislative director of the Alaska Wilderness League, knows just how harmful drilling can be. “Prudhoe bay has 400 toxic spills a year,” he says with concern, “that’s more than one spill a day. These spills don’t only affect the drilling site but lands adjacent as well. Devastating effects are real and clear. Environmentalists have not made them up.” It is hard to forget the oil covered seabirds, otters and seals that slowly died after 10 million gallons of crude oil spilled from the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Naturally, environmentalists cringe when plans arise to drill in an area full of wildlife. The possibility that drilling may take place in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), an area renowned for unique wildlife and pristine habitat, is a shock to any nature lover.

Drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge will definitely leave its mark. Moore explains that drilling in the refuge will have devastating effects: “Oil exploration is planned to take place in the most critical and sensitive area of the refuge. 130,000 caribou, the last large migrating mammal in the U.S, migrate hundreds of miles to calf here in late May and June, in this one area, and this is where they want to put oil rigs! Gravel roads and drained wetlands are not conducive to them giving birth. It is also devastating to denning polar bears. The polar bear population is already declining and is already threatened by extinction. Oil drilling and extraction may increase the odds of losing the species. Native Alaskans, Gwich’in Indians, whose life revolves around this piece of land will have the most important thing in their culture, the calving ground, taken away from them Gwich’in Indians, rely on the migratory Porcupine Caribou herd as a key source of food and clothing.] It is cultural genocide.” To make matters worse, the Refuge constitutes the last 5% of the Alaskan North Slope not open to oil drilling. Drilling operations already exist throughout the rest of the area. The Refuge is the last area wildlife can live peacefully.

North to South – The Alaska Pipeline

The oil industry argues that they will only leave a small footprint in the Arctic, covering a mere 2,000 acres-the size of the Dallas Airport. Yet these measurements do not realistically represent the areas affected by these drilling operations. Vinay Jain, a spokesperson for the National Wildlife Federation, is skeptical of with the oil industry’s skewed measurements. “They have said it will only cover 2000 acres,” he says, “but the problem lies in the fact that they are condensing. If you realistically measure the areas influenced by oil rigs, it is really spread out. Think of it as a spider web: When the web is spread out, it covers a very large area but when you ball it up it is only a fraction of its original size. They [the oil industry] are giving you the number made up of all the rigs without counting the area in between-the industry is giving you the balled up number. Roads and platforms, these things are all spread out and cause fragmentation of habitat. It isn’t just one solid area of 2000 acres, it’s much more.”

The Republican Party has had an obvious interest in the Arctic refuge’s oil wells. As the former owner of Arbusto Energy Inc. and Bush Exploration, American President Bush has always had an interest in oil. Vice President Cheney, also a former oil man, had experience being the CEO of the world’s largest oil service company-the Halliburton Company. It is not surprising then, that oil companies have connections with the government. Defenders of Wildlife note that oil and gas firms have donated $1,761,567 to Bush’s presidential campaign making them one of the highest contributors and therefore also the most influential. Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP PLC are some of the companies enthusiastic about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

From well to pipeline to tankers bound for world oil markets A part of the massive Prudhoe Bay oilfield

Recent republican gains in the Senate could give President Bush a real chance of opening the Alaska wildlife refuge to drilling. For one thing, four Republican senators who favor drilling in the refuge were elected early November and replaced Democrats who opposed the proposal in 2003. These new members could make all the difference when voting to drill in the Arctic. There is also a sneaky strategy involved to guarantee success for pro-drilling groups: By attaching drilling to the federal budget resolution it becomes a filibuster-proof strategy. The budget resolution would instruct the House Resources Committee to generate savings over the next few years. This goal would be accomplished by identifying new revenue sources, one of which would be the revenue created by selling oil leases in the Arctic refuge.

Jain is disappointed with the strategy: “It [attaching drilling revenues to the budget] is a fairly undemocratic way of doing things. This is a way of avoiding an honest and open debate. It is not the right way to decide an issue as important as this. A fair and open debate is the proper way to handle this situation and the drilling proposals should be distinct from the budget bill which was never intended for this purpose.”

So why is drilling in the Arctic so important? Moore is surprised with the oil industry’s interest there as well: “Why are they so interested in drilling in the Arctic refuge? It’s hard to understand. It’s not about the oil. The House Majority Leader, Tom Delay (R-Texas), gave a speech last year admitting that it’s all about the precedent. He essentially said that if we can drill in the Arctic Refuge we can drill anywhere. Opening the Arctic to oil exploration will open other lands for future use by the oil industry.” According to Moore, “It starts with the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and then it’ll be Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or the coast of California. It’s not about the oil. The Coastal Plain is the last bit of Arctic coast left. The oil industry would want nothing more than to put a fence of oil rigs around Alaska. Its crazy to me, but it seems that that’s what they want. Like a bunch of drunken sailors; they are on a binge and the only thing they want is more oil and more land to suck it out of.”

Jain explains that “the amount of oil in the refuge is marginal at best. It is not going to make a difference. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge is symbolic of a larger effort. It’s about getting into one protected area and using the momentum to get into another.”

Only 5% of Alaska’s Wilderness Remains Off-Limits to Drilling The ANWR portion just happens to be sitting on vast oil reserves.

The Bush administration officials claim that drilling in the Arctic will enhance U.S security by reducing dependence on imported oil. They also promote this controversial venture by stating that drilling will reduce the country’s energy shortages. However, very little electrical power comes from oil. Another argument states that drilling will reduce the oil prices. The American Petroleum Institute explains how this would work: “Crude oil prices are established in world markets responding to supply and demand. New discoveries are crucially important to supply. Every barrel of oil produced domestically is one less barrel that must be purchased from foreign sources. In the long term, additional U.S. supplies help to hold down crude oil prices because demand for crude oil from non-U.S. sources is lower than it would be without added domestic production…”

Moore explains that “the argument they put forth is that drilling will reduce our dependency on foreign oil. The Department of Energy, however, stated that if we started drilling today, oil would not reach peak production till after 2020 and if oil is in fact present, it would only reduce oil dependency by about 2%.” It is assumed that the oil present in Alaska is not enough to meet even a fraction of America’s needs. Projections in 1998 showed a 95% chance of finding 3 billion barrels of oil and a 5% chance of finding 10.5 barrels of oil. 3 billion barrels of oil would barely supply enough oil to last half a year in the U.S. It is hard to believe that drilling in Alaska will benefit U.S citizens since any oil that exists will take about a decade to reach the market and estimates on the amount of oil in the area are speculative. Further more, prices will not fluctuate from drilling in Alaska since the amount of oil found in the refuge is minimal.

Eventually though, there will be no where else to drill when we have exhausted all other resources. Jain believes the best solution is to look for additional energy resources and reduce demand for oil before it gets to that point. “Reducing demand for oil is a better strategy then drilling a pristine corner of Alaska to increase supply, especially when there’s relatively little oil there. When we think about ways to meet America’s energy needs we tend to turn towards oil, however we can still maintain an American lifestyle with alternative energy. The technology is out there. Hydrogen is something that may be promising years down the road, but in the short term, we can save a lot of oil by making cars more fuel efficient. By simply increasing the average fuel economy by a few gallons we would save much more oil than we would get from drilling in the refuge. The new Honda Accord Hybrid is more powerful than the regular Accord. The idea that you have to give up one thing [power] to be environmentally sound is a false one. You can have a fuel efficient car that is also more powerful. We can’t just drill our way to energy independence.”

Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was founded over 40 years ago by President Eisenhower. He wanted to preserve this pristine area. It is a sad fact that congress wants to abandon 44 years of legacy. This wildlife refuge is one of the last pristine areas on earth. Caribou, grizzlies, polar bears, wolves, thousands of birds and countless other animals make this unique area their home. This pristine habitat should not be turned into an industrial zone.

The battle for this area is symbolic and it is important for conservationists and the American public in general to realize this. “This is one of the last pristine areas in America,” Jain says, “we know we are not going to reduce gas prices and reduce independence on foreign oil by drilling here. If we can’t conserve this tiny sliver of habitat for future generations what does that say about our priorities?”

A row of Jatropha trees – plants with potential to alleviate fuel shortages

The potential to run engines on biofuel goes all the way back to Rudolph Diesel’s successful trials using peanut oil a century ago.

Yet it is only now, with the transport sector likely to be the fastest growing contributor to greenhouse gas emissions this century, and diesel prices climbing steadily as oil appears scarcer and less secure, that the advantages of biodiesel are being appreciated by governments around the world. However, there is as yet no source of biodiesel that is cheap and plentiful enough to meet the potential demand. Running trucks on used cooking fat from fast food outlets is not going to be a large scale option.

Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is researching Jatropha on a large scale.

However, across the developing world there’s growing excitement about the possibility that an up-to-now obscure tree, Jatropha Curcus, might offer a sustainable, large scale source of biodiesel. This non-edible shrub is planted as a hedge in both Africa and India, and its beans are used as a laxative in traditional medicine. When crushed the beans produce oil that can be refined into biodiesel.

According to the International Energy Association, the use of oil, including diesel, for road transport will double in the next 25 years and greenhouses gases will increase commensurably. In the EU, legislation is already in place to mitigate this by increasing the proportion of biodiesel in Europe’s transport energy mix. The EU biofuels directive requires a minimum level of biofuels as a proportion of fuels sold in the EU of 2% by 2005, 5.75% by 2010 and 20% by 2020. The main green fuels will be ethanol and biodiesel, and demand for biodiesel is expected to be up to 10.5 billion litres by 2010.

If that demand can be met, it will be good news for the environment and for our general health. While combustion of any fuel releases CO2 into the atmosphere, biodiesel produces lower emissions than mineral diesel. Furthermore, because it comes from crops that absorb CO2 as they grow, biodiesel’s overall contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is extremely low. A 1998 biodiesel lifecycle study, jointly sponsored by the US Department of Energy (USDE) and the US Department of Agriculture, concluded that pure B100 biodiesel reduces net CO2 emissions by 100 percent compared to petroleum diesel. With a B20 mix (a 20% bio-diesel solution), the net CO2 emissions are reduced by 20%. Compared with mineral diesel, biodiesel reduces particle emissions (PM) by 30%, carbon monoxide (CO), which affects air quality and human health, by 50%, and sodium monoxide (SOx) by 50%. Unlike mineral diesel, bio-diesel is non-toxic and is biodegradable.

The EU biofuels policy currently relies on an assumption that the heavily-subsidised cultivation of rapeseed will meet its biodiesel targets. However, this is a very large assumption. Already some 3 million hectares of agricultural land across the EU, an area roughly the size of Belgium, grows 10 millon tonnes of rapeseed. But since just 20% of this is ultimately used for biodiesel as opposed to food oil, another whole Belgium would have to be covered in the yellow rapeseed blanket to meet the targets. Rapeseed tires the land, and requires expensive crop rotation and fossil-based fertilisers. Growing rapeseed also has an opportunity cost of preventing farmers from growing more environmentally-friendly, less intensive, and often more profitable produce such as cereals or organic root vegetables. Under these circumstances, the supply of rapeseed oil is unlikely to be able meet the demand.

Jatropha not only produces biodiesel, it grows in vast areas where deserts encroach, where no other plant can grow.

One UK-based company, D1 Oils plc (www.d1plc.com), has put itself at the forefront of efforts to fill this gap with Jatropha oil. Jatropha grows quickly, is hardy, establishes itself easily even in arid land, and is drought-tolerant, requiring only 300mm of annual rainfail. It grows especially well in South and West Africa, and South East Asia. Jatropha can even be grown on semi-arid land using waste water, making it a useful tool in the prevention of desertification. Each Jatropha tree can produce an average of 3.5 kilos of beans each year depending on irrigation levels. According to D1′s estimates, if 2,200 Jatropha trees are planted per hectare, each hectare could yield up to 7 tonnes of beans per annum. Jatropha beans can produce oil yields of up to 40% and D1 expects each hectare to deliver about 3,000 litres of biodiesel.

In the established process for refining biodiesel, the vegetable oil is esterified, reacted with methanol and sodium hydroxide, to produce diesel and glycerine. D1 has adapted this method to create its own proprietary process producing biodiesel from Jatropha and various other feedstocks. The Jatropha biodiesel meets the European EN14214 standard for use as a pure or blended automotive fuel for diesel engines.

D1 has already secured plantation agreements in Burkina Faso, Ghana and the Philippines totalling 37,000 hectares, and has the option to extend planting to approximately 990,000 further hectares of land in Burkina Faso and 5 million hectares of land in India. The company recently raised L13 million in a London Stock Exchange flotation to fund these initiatives.

According to Philip Wood, Chief of Executive of D1 Oils, the company is on the way to delivering enough Jatropha biodiesel to meet EC demand. “We have created a unique business model and put in place the right mix of technology, IPR and contracts, as well as a strong team, to deliver results and grow the business. With a total of 6 million hectares under option, roughly the same size as two Belgiums, we could be producing 18 billion litres of biodiesel, which at current estimates would meet demand expectations in Europe.”

However, the demand for biodiesel is not coming solely from developed markets. One of the main reasons for the excitement around Jatropha is that developing countries also want their own biodiesel blends for domestic transport and power generation, both as a substitute for expensive oil imports and to prevent pollution. The President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, recently welcomed the biodiesel initiative undertaken by D1 in West Africa, saying, “By producing our own biodiesel, we will gain greater energy security, save valuable foreign currency, and potentially become an exporter of biodiesel.”

The potential for local demand for biodiesel as well as for export has been anticipated by D1 Oils. According to Philip Wood, the company has structured its production technology to offer developing countries small refineries that can produce biodiesel close to the plantations. “Our small, economic, modular refinery is easily transportable, produces minimal emissions, uses virtually no water and can be powered in remote locations by its own biodiesel,” says Wood. “In addition to our refinery in Newcastle, the first of its kind in the EU, we have plans to provide modular refineries in India, the Philippines and South Africa.”

D1 Oils PLC has designed a portable refinery that can produce 22,000 liters of biodiesel per day.

The D1-20 refinery can produce up to 8 million liters of biodiesel per annum, equivalent to approximately 22,000 liters per day. It is housed in a container that is 3.3 meters wide, 10 meters long and 4 meters high, and the overall refinery systems can store 24 tons of vegetable oil, 25 tons of catalyst and 20 tons of biodiesel.

The benefits for the developing world go further than producing fuel for local use. Since the planting, growing and refining of Jatropha seeds requires manpower, its cultivation will generate large numbers of jobs in areas of low employment. Errol Elsdon from PetroSAF, an African fuel distribution company, estimates that Jatropha plantations are likely to create at least one job for every four hectares of planted trees; the total impact on agricultural employment alone could be huge. There are also other benefits in terms of both byproducts from the esterification process and from the potential for intercropping. The biodiesel refining process also produces profitable by-products such as glycerine for cosmetics and seed cake for fertiliser and animal feed, and Jatropha can potentially be intercropped with other valuable plants such vanilla or patchouli.

However, it is Jatropha’s ability to grow on marginal, waste or arid land and produce energy crops without displacing food crops that is perhaps of most potential importance to the developing world, particularly as they face the affects of climate change. This aspect of Jatropha has made it particularly attractive to the Indian government. Given India’s booming economy, its transport sector will consume ever higher amounts of fuel over the coming years. Indeed, demand for diesel fuel is expected to grow from current levels of 44 million tonnes to 67 million by 2010. Aware of these predictions, the government of India has a $300m biofuels programme in place which foresees India replacing 5% of current diesel with biodiesel by 2005/6, eventually rising to 20%. However, the Indian government is also aware of the environmental benefits of growing the tree on marginal and arid land. In a recent speech, the Indian President, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, declared that “India needs to grow Jatropha to tackle dry land and generate biodiesel.” India has large areas of poor quality land ideal for the cultivation of energy crops, so growing Jatropha won’t divert land away from growing vital food crops.

Hops, Barley, & Jatropha India’s Mohan Breweries is working to develop Jatropha

D1 Oils is currently in discussions with the Indian government to see how it can help India meet its biodiesel targets. According to D1 estimates, for India to reach its target of 20% bio-diesel mix, some 2m hectares of Jatropha will be needed. With this target in mind, D1 has been working with the Tamil Nadu agricultural university on research into Jatropha and large-scale planting and has put forward proposals to plant Jatropha in the states of Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. D1 has also entered into a joint venture agreement with India’s Mohan Breweries to operate and control future projects in the region. A pilot scheme of approximately 5,000 hectares has been established with Mohan and planting is anticipated to be completed during early 2005.

Developing countries are also aware that as the mechanisms of the Kyoto Treaty come into force to reduce industrial and commercial greenhouse gas emissions, the planting of biofuel crops may well create carbon sinks that can earn them cash through their sale of emissions credits to polluting industries in developed countries. The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) created by Kyoto is still in its infancy. However, if CDM credits do become available for planting trees, it could add a further inducement to plant Jatropha to act as an energy-producing carbon sink.

The history of the commercial contacts between the developed and the developing world has not been smooth, particularly in the sphere of agriculture and energy. However, the fact that Jatropha requires a warmer climate than we have in Europe could enable it to make a very positive impact on the environments and economies of developing countries. Money, as the old adage goes, may not grow on trees, but a possible energy solution clearly does. In today’s world of mounting fossil fuel prices and concern about global warming that could amount to the same thing.

About the Author: Candida Jones is an environmental writer and consultant. She is former editor of the UK magazine, Environmental Business News Briefing, and a former reporter for Financial Times Energy. Candida lives and works in London. She can be reached via editor@ecoworld.com

Turbines off Germany’s north coast benefit from consistent offshore winds

The German wind industry in 2003

installed 1700 propellers rated at 2,645 MW. Although this figure is 18.5% down from the 3,247 MW newly connected in 2002, it is a good in light of the mainly negative economic trends of the last months of the year. Peter Ahmels, President of the German Wind Energy Association, stated that no other country can point to such growth in absolute numbers. Last year more than 22% was added to installed capacity making Germany the world’s second most important wind market. As of the end of June 2004, the total wind energy capacity installed in Germany amounted to almost 15,327 MW. This makes Germany the world leader in the use of wind power.

Nationwide the power stations produce 14,645 MW. In a normal wind year they could produce 5.9% of the national power supply – another indicator that the use of wind power is growing.

Noteworthy Capacity Installed in the German States

It is clear that Germany’s top state for wind energy is Lower Saxony with 3,922 MW of installed capacity. Thuringia added the most by far of all the federal states in comparison to its total installed capacity. Double-coasted Schleswig-Holstein added insignificantly more plants to the grid than Thuringia in absolute terms. Wind-blessed Baltic Mecklenburg-West Pomerania did not exploit its potential, adding only 19 machines in the first three quarters, 3 machines less than added by the state of Hesse in the same period.

Manufacturers’ share of the German market in 2003

Two manufacturers did especially well last year: Vestas Deutschland GmbH and REpower Systems AG. While new installation numbers declined generally, they increased their output and grew their market shares. Vestas climbed by 5.6% to 23.5% and REpower added 3.9% to reach 10.7%.

Vestas sold 264 of their 2-MW machines in Germany and 55 to Austria, but there are large deficits in the service area. Vestas received a poor rating in the latest BWE survey of satisfaction among operating companies. Another important point to mention in connection with Vestas is its merger with NEG Micon.

REpower wants to concentrate on foreign business this year; they aim to put up 50 turbines outside Germany. Fritz Vahrenholt, head of REpower, was also glad that the gap with GE Wind Energy shrank to 14 MW. It is expected that REpower will outperform GE in Germany, since they are widely considered to have a better range of machines and more orders for the MM82, the new 2-MW converter. GE counters that their first calculations show that they doubled the capacity delivered over 2002, which was 637 MW. If that indicator should be confirmed, the Americans will push Enercon from second place in the international ranking. Together with some 889 MW on the German market, Enercon installed more than 1,100 MW in 2003.

Enercon spokesman Andreas Doser says that orders are well booked for the first months of 2005. By the end of the year he expects Enercon to have a greater number of machines and a bigger market share.

The merger with Vestas should help NEG Micon Deutschland, although they again failed to meet their objectives. Again, against the set by CEO Erik Laursen to reach a market share in the double digits. This results from unforeseen delays in a number of large projects.

AN Windenergie GmbH is unsatisfied with the 5% market share it reached. They are aiming to get back to between eight and ten per cent. They want to lead with their 2.3-MW machines with 82-metre rotor diameters. The new 3.5-MW machine will be launched in the latter half of this year. This machine is optimal for offshore projects in Great Britain and in Germany, where there are no height restrictions.

Nordex AG crashed from 8.7% to 4.8% market share, causing them to implement a consolidation program. However, it is expected that it will take time for the measures to have an effect. For this year, their prognosis of their market share is lean: They want to reach at least the 5 % level.

Another decline was to be seen in DeWind GmbH’s market share – 1.3%. They are stronger in Austria (and internationally) than in Germany, but important for them is not where they’re growing, but that they are growing. For the future they are working to get a bigger slice of the German pie for themselves.

Like DeWind, Fuhrlaender AG also sold more plants abroad than in Germany in 2003. It gained around 1% of the home market again, which is not expected to change this year. There are more foreign orders on the books, for example, in China.

About the Author: Gordon Feller is the Director of ReNewUSA and editor of Urban Age Magazine. In addition to extensive journalistic coverage of the worldwide energy sector and emerging environmental businesses, Feller has served as a senior-level advisor to companies investing in new technologies, processes and solutions. The list of clients ranges from small and little known firms to large well known firms: HP, Columbia Chemical, Phelps Dodge, Chevron, Apple, AT&T, IBM. Feller’s first work assessing environmentally sound economic policies was published during his freshman year at Columbia University. He continued there for four more years, finishing with a graduate degree in international affairs. He can be reached via editor@ecoworld.com.

Wind turbines generating 3.0 megawatts, such as this one from Vestas, are becoming common

Pfleiderer, after its most successful year, left the wind business. The newcomers had erected 27 machines totaling some 19 MW. Pfleiderer sold its offshore segment (with the 5-MW Multibrid plant) to Prokon Nord Energiesysteme GmbH. The pilot plant is to start operating in Bremerhaven.

In addition to the Multibrid machine, the first pilot plants from GE and W2E (Wind to Energy GmbH), REpower will start operating its new 5-MW giant propeller – so there is no shortage of new technical developments on the German market.

But that has not lulled BWE president Ahmels into a sense of complacency. “The wind industry is having to contend with headwinds that are getting stronger.” He refers to the recently enacted placement regulations in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony. New building laws will also make planning more difficult. “The worsening of the Renewable Energy Sources Act is not going to make wind power expansion any easier.”

With steady growth in Europe, a bull market under way in the U.S., and a string of projects under development in several other countries, the global outlook for wind energy equipment in Germany is very bright.

German Wind Energy Association

Herrenteichstr. 1

49074 Osnabrueck, Germany

Tel.: 49-541-35060-15

Fax: 49-541-35060-20

www.wind-energie.de

Publications of the German Wind Energy Association available in English:

Wind Energy 2004 – Market Survey

Wind Energy Knowledge – Multimedia Insights and Outlook

Handbook of Renewable Energies in the European Union I and II

Wind Power Plants – Fundamentals, Design, Construction, and Operation

“New Energy” is regularly published by the German Wind Energy Association

About the Author:
Gordon Feller is the CEO of Urban Age Institute (www.UrbanAge.org). During the past twenty years he has authored more than 500 magazine articles, journal articles or newspaper articles on the profound changes underway in politics, economics, and ecology – with a special emphasis on sustainable development. Gordon is the editor of Urban Age Magazine, a unique quarterly which serves as a global resource and which was founded in 1990. He can be reached at GordonFeller@UrbanAge.org and he is available for speaking to your organization about the issues raised in this and his other numerous articles published in EcoWorld.

Editor’s Note: Tell us what you really think, Dr. Wheeler! This scathing, one-sided opinion piece, which could air on any number of American right-wing talk radio shows where environmentalists are routinely derided as “whackos,” nonetheless raises interesting points. To develop policies governing production of food, energy, water, based on the “precautionary principle” may sometimes be an unaffordable luxury.

Wheeler can’t refute the premise of anti-GMO activists, that “the bar for risk has been raised to the threshold of possible extinction itself” but he is correct that proving a negative – this GMO will never hurt anything – is impossible and the consequence of unfliching adherence to the precautionary principle dooms any further GMO development, and many other promising new technologies. The challenges GMO innovations help solve; hunger, disease, scarcity, pollution, poverty, are also grave threats to humanity – which is worse?

To say GMOs pose no danger at all is an overstatement. But environmentalism cannot become an absolute authority, the ethic that trumps everything. The sanctity of the earth must be balanced by the needs of humanity. Alarmist, black-and-white arguments against GMOs will ring as hollow in the ears of skeptics as might Wheeler’s testimony here. With GMOs, the truth of their efficacy or danger is situational or unknown. Moreover it is crucial that activists distinguish between the economic issues associated with GMOs; globalization and trends towards corporate consolidation of agriculture, and the health and environmental issues surrounding GMOs. These issues are correlated, but are problematic for completely different reasons. They should be separate debates.

Genetically modified organisms according to Wheeler can in some cases enable more commercial crop diversity. For example, currently there are only a handful of hybrid varieties of corn and soybeans that comprise a significant portion of world output. There is nuance to genetic science. Is it all bad? Probably not. Are there dangers? Of course. What of rice that’s been genetically engineered to contain vitamin A, an innovation that has prevented literally millions of children from going blind? Should we never have done this? Are there always preferable alternatives to genetically modified crops?

Media iconoclast H.L. Mencken, around 1925, wrote that “the whole aim of politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”. Well, the hubbub about GMO is less about the science than it is about politics. A GMO is an organism whose genome has been altered by the techniques of genetic engineering so that its DNA contains one or more genes not normally found there.

Humans have been genetically engineering their food crops for, oh, maybe 10,000 years. Suppose you’re a subsistence farmer in 3000 B.C. and it’s a year of drought. You try to gather enough of your crop to feed your family, and you save the seed from the most robust (drought resistant) plants for next years planting. After some years, you have engineered a drought resistant strain of wheat or millet or whatever. Later we learned to cross-pollinate our food crops with wild cousins or some mutant weed having properties we wanted, such as resistance to insects or to fungus. We’ve done the same with all of our domestic animals. We’ve been messing around with genes FOREVER, even when we had no idea that there was such a thing as a gene! The bottom line is: NOTHING we eat is “natural”!

So what is the difference between traditional selective breeding of crop plants and most modern biotech manipulation? Easy answer: the traditional way is much less exact and lots slower. And because it is less exact, there is a greater chance for some unknown rogue gene to express itself. So why are so many people afraid of biotech crops? The reasons the fear mongers like Greenpeace put forth are that genetic modifications of plants may produce crops containing unknown toxins and allergens (aren’t many of us allergic to lots and lots of “natural pollens,” so what’s a few more— take your antihistamines!). Or perhaps a gene such as the one that makes corn resistant to the corn borer bug will jump into wild cousins and kill bugs (hopefully, mosquitoes). We could even have super frankenweeds appear (as if we don’t have lots of those already, like crabgrass). The fact is that after more than 20 years of research and development; 86% of soy, 46% of corn, and 76% of cotton crops grown in the U.S. are bio-engineered crops. And to quote a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The bugs are fine, super weeds are science fiction, and no one is breaking out in hives”.

The answer to my arguments that the anti-GMO people put forth is something they invented that they call the “precautionary principle”. Anti-every new technology “activists such as Jemery Rifkin state it thusly: “because the stakes are so high, we have to weigh even the most dramatic benefits against the prospects of even more destructive consequences. The old Enlightenment science is too primitive to address a world where the bar for risk has been raised to the threshold of possible extinction itself.” So to these folks, scientific evidence doesn’t matter, science itself is irrelevant. If you really don’t believe in science, I suggest you go out on the roof of a tall building and jump off while flapping your arms. Maybe Newton was wrong and you will float around instead of falling to your unanticipated death. Only one’s religious belief that new technologies could kill us all should be considered. By this “principle”, stone-age activists and “tribal interest” groups would have seen to it that the wheel, fire, stone axes, and riding horses would be banned. Later, we would have banned electricity, railroad trains, automobiles, antibiotics (penicillin can kill those allergic to it), indoor plumbing (you could drown), television (in the 50s, it was thought by pre-greenpeace groups that rays from TV tubes could cause cancer), cell phones (more cancer) and chocolate lattes.

In the real world today, people are starving in Africa because government won’t allow them to eat genetically modified corn meal. I guess it’s better to be dead now than to have to worry about turning into a mutant later! It is true that at least in Mexico, some GM corn genes have spread to some wild corn cousins. So now you have some wild corn that is resistant to the corn borer bug; so what? Where is the danger to anything? What if scientists inserted an anti-freeze gene from an Artic flounder into an orange tree that could make the orange tree frost resistant, no polluting smudge pots needed. The orange tree could maybe even grow in Montana where there are no wild cousins to spread any “mutant” genes to? You may be worried about mercury levels in fish, but you know that fish oils are really good for your cardiovascular system. Why not insert a salmon gene into soy so that soybean oil could be rich in fish oils? A great potential health benefit without any danger; unless you think you might grow fins or gills by eating such a GMO. Hey, you could become a much better swimmer!

A recent study (conducted by folks with an anti-GMO agenda, perhaps?) showed that fields of organically grown crops had far, far more bees and butterflies buzzing and fluttering around than herbicide resistant GMO crop fields did. Of course, the American media jumped all over that study with the message that GMO crops kill bees and butterflies and probably every other bug there is (again, hopefully mosquitoes). DUH! If you were a smart bee or butterfly, would you want to hang out in a GMO field of herbicide resistant corn or soy? “Gosh darn, say the bugs, there are no flowering weeds around here thanks to all that Roundup stuff, maybe I should try out that organic farm over there across the road that has lots and lots of flowering weeds for my dining pleasure”! In other words, upon reflection, such a “study” means nothing except that it is trying to advance an anti-GMO political agenda.

In the late 1960″ and early 70′s, after world famous fear monger Paul Ehrlich had predicted that virtually everybody on earth would starve to death by 1980, Norman Borlaugh won a Nobel Peace Prize for developing (by traditional breeding techniques) monocultures of VERY high yielding wheat and rice (compared to what was being grown at the time) that now are grown everywhere in the world. This “green revolution” is the reason India and China now can feed themselves; and which is why there are about 2.5 billion people alive now than there would have been, whether you like it or not. However, these now ubiquitous crops absolutely need a gazillion tons of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and lots and lots of water every crop year. This is the stuff you are all eating now. Because they are essentially monocultures, some mutant strain of wheat rust could come along some year and wipe out most of the world’s wheat crop. This is a legitimate doomsday concern, as opposed to the not at all legitimate concerns about modern GMO. Wouldn’t you rather have some alternative crop options available? Ones that have been engineered to not need a gazillion tons of pesticides and chemical fertilizers??

OK, you still insist that “organic” crops are so very safe and superior, and you don’t care that they are also far more expensive than “regular” crops. Here is only one example of many I could give that show the opposite about “safety”. In England, 6 tested brands of organically grown corn meal were recently recalled after they were found to contain dangerous levels (more than 20 times the safety limit) of fumonisin, a very potent natural carcinogen produced by a fungus. It is interesting (check this out, greenies) that there has been no testing of organically grown corn meal in the U.S. The reason for the high level of fumoniusin is that chewing insects break the outer coating of the corn kernel (even in corn sprayed with conventional pesticides), allowing free entry to mold spores. GMO corn, however, kills the chewing bugs immediately, so that no mold spores get in. The U.S. Agricultural Research Service (for whom I used to work) found that fumonisin levels were about 40 times lower in GMO corn than non-GMO corn sprayed with the usual pesticides.

Finally, are those of you who are against biotech crops also against biotech drugs? If you had cancer, would you refuse treatment? If you are a diabetic out marching against GMO, do you realize that for the past 20 years your daily dose of insulin is produced from a bacteria or yeast genetically modified to produce human insulin? I have not heard any protests about this fact.

Edward Wheeler, Ph.D in chemistry from U.C. Berkeley (long ago during hippie times), is a noted biochemist who has had extensive experience in food chemistry, cancer research, and toxicology. He has authored numerous articles in refereed scientific journals on those subjects, and holds 12 U.S. patents in the areas of reduced calorie foods and lower calorie “natural fats”.