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When economic interests have precedence over common sense: Since April 2006 our lawyer, Dr. Jose Pablo Duran Gomez, sued the Colombian government, demanding for more research be carried out on the production and combustion of biofuels to better understand, anticipate and mitigate as far as possible, the mechanical, environmental, social, economic and public health effects that these biofuels have and will have. The phenomena associated with biofuels are not well understood and even worse, ignored or underestimated, which have lead to recent and strong pronouncements from organizations such as FAO, World Bank, UN, EU and a significant number of environmental and human rights organizations throughout the world.

Despite a large number of international studies demonstrating risks and dangers associated to the use of biofuels, added to those that appear every day worldwide, Judge Matilde Lemos Sanmartin, ex-fifth Administrative Judge of Bogota, said that “the evidence presented is insufficient,” and thus refused the request of more and deep studies, ignoring the precautionary principle and the legal mechanisms followed to obtain these studies, mandatory when the discussion is so important for the citizenry and the country, what can be applied to many other Latin American countries.

It sounds like she does not read newspapers or hear the news. Curiously, our demand was the last judgement signed by Lemos Sanmartin before being promoted to Judge of the Administrative Tribunal in the Arauca Department.

In Colombia there were only 2 studies on 8 automobiles, which anyway show that ethanol harms some components, especially in older carburetor cars, more than a half of the colombian vehicle fleet.

It is ironic that while in countries like Germany, large automobile manufacturers, have decided to reduce the proportion of ethanol blending from 10% to 7% because of the damage it can cause to their vehicles and have postponed until 2009 the usage of ethanol, in Colombia the government is trying to accelerate the process to force an increase in the mixture, raising the minimum to 20% by 2012 and starting with 12% in the period 2009-2010. There are no vehicles in Colombia that can withstand these mixtures, and even if the new cars are made with the required specifications, nothing is said about the possible mechanical damage to nearly 5 million vehicles currently circulating in the country, which demonstrates improvisation and irresponsibility about the topic.

By the other hand, the Health Secretary of Bogotá reported for 2007 an increase of more than 1700 cases of acute respiratory illness in children under the age of 5 years old, only in this city, with respect to 2006. These cared-for cases are linked, probably, to the increase in the concentration of tropospheric ozone caused by the higher volatility of gasoline when it is mixed with ethanol, which leads to a greater amount of volatile organic compounds, VOCs, in the atmosphere, which due to photochemical reactions, produce this and other pollutants hazardous to health, such as ozone, nitrogen oxides and acetaldehyde.

This increase, about 6% compared to 2006, is surely much higher taking into account that many of those affected children have no access to health care system and therefore these cases of morbidity and mortality are not recorded. Moreover, is also necessary to include other risk groups such as elders and those already suffering lung disease, throughout the country; this increase should be carefully evaluated, global warming and climate change can not be the unique and magical explanations for these phenomena, the colombian government must do everything that is feasible and humanly possible to address this situation.

The increase in food prices, of which Colombia is no an exception although the government affirms otherwise, is only the visible tip of the iceberg, perhaps the most painful of the problems that if not widely studied, monitored and controlled, can lead in the nearby to very serious consequences as has happened in Malaysia, the third CO2 donor in the world due, in large percentage, to african palm monoculture.

Nothing is mentioned by the colombian media about the imposition of an environmental quality stamp by the European Union to palm oil exportations from Colombia due to the negative environmental effects caused by the clearing and burning carried out to sow sugar cane and african palm, low-paid work in harsh conditions, the forced displacement and crimes committed in relation to the appropriating of farmlands, with the only exception of a paid notice in which the stamp is presented like a generous gift for all of us from palm oil sowers.

Unfortunately, there are many more unwanted consequences; in the medium and long term we can expect more forced displacement and killing of peasants, changes in the use of farmlands, desertification, pollution of soils and water, economic and technological dependency, impoverishment of large population groups, concentration of farmlands in the hands of large economic groups and corporations, severe ecological damage due to intensive use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, to name just a few unwanted results of this “boom.”

Ethanol contains a third less energy than gasoline, so vehicles travel less kilometers per gallon, however around 800 gallons of water are needed to produce one of ethanol. The search for new energy sources is necessary but we can not simply change some pollutants for others, affording the risk of creating more serious problems than those to be resolved; all efforts to fully understand the whole consequences that the production and usage of this biofuels are necessary and urgent.

We will not relent in our efforts to demand that ethanol and oil palm production be carried out with human and social sense, and not only commercial objectives like what are happening right now in Colombia. Biofuels should be seen as a temporary and partial solution, not as a total remedy. We do not consider acceptable nor secure the omission of serious and conclusive studies in order to protect economic interests that hardly benefit persons other than the owners of this profitable business; we will appeal to all possible instances in Colombia and abroad to force that precautionary principle be applied in order to protect ourselves and future generations of irreparable damage which could result prohibitively expensive in terms of environment and public health.

C. Fernando Marquez M.
Executive Director
Colombian Society of Motorists S.C.A.

http://www.sca.com.co

Today the Olympic Games began in burgeoning, triumphant China. And today the Russians rumbled again, questioning the notion that their settlers of 200 years or more, unmoved and in contiguous lands, constitute a diaspora. What significance will this day hold for posterity? China displaying the ascendancy that has been her destiny, or Russia, wounded and dismembered in the wake of their cold war defeat, swollen with carbon revenue and resurgent as well, reminding us of their resiliency and resolve?
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Pelecanus occidentalis

From a strategic standpoint, Russia’s concern with Ossetia is more to do with the plight of ethnic Russians everywhere in the former Soviet Republics, than with Georgia specifically. Millions of ethnic Russians still live in these suddenly sundered lands, and their predicament is analogous to the predicament of suddenly exiled Germans in the Sudetenland and elsewhere prior to WWII. By no means are Russia’s concerns invalid, and how they are dealt with is also of concern – in ways not immediately appreciated. Russia’s abandonment of direct governance of their peripheries of empire, their historical sphere of influence, has lead to destruction of wildlife on a scale orders of magnitude greater than they were under the USSR. From Siberian tigers to Caspian sturgeon, the absence of Russian control has many faces, not all of them illustrious.

That someone would choose the opening day of the XXIX Olympics to escalate their fight shouldn’t surprise us too much. Somebody was going to try to steal the show as Beijing began their Olympic opening spectacle. With hundreds of thousands of closely monitored street cameras and plainclothes officers patrolling in equal number, challenges to China’s management of the Olympic games will be far away – because just as it was in 1936, the swarms of drones aren’t in the skies just yet, and the greatest global capitals remain tranquil.

Should China be the focal point of this day, as war erupts in the Caucasus, midway between the Balkans, the Middle East, and the tumultuous and seething ferment that is Central Asia? All of this is far, far away from Beijing; only distant murmurs can be heard from Xinjiang and Tibet, or beyond the borders, but Beijing celebrates, as they should. Should China’s human rights record be assailed here today? Why go down that path? Why not simply observe that the admiration many of us rightfully feel for China’s “can-do” attitude, their ability to take decisive collective action as a society, is also reminiscent of the admiration many in the west felt for Germany in the early 1930′s. And as one still might say, am anfang alles gut war. How do we channel all that energy and keep it good – can China process their paroxysms of nationalism better than many of their predecessors on the global stage?

Is it only a gratuitous digression to mention the son of Albert Speer designed the grand boulevard that connects the old city to the Olympic complex in Beijing? Why, when so many of us like wide boulevards? Was Albert Speer Sr. so bad, or just deluded, or trapped in a system that changed into something he’d never imagined? In any case, today’s boulevard emanating from the mind of a Speer is not only realized this time, unlike Hauptstadt Germania, but is green and cutting edge, instead of nostalgic and grandiose. Both are exceedingly evocative of national pride.

As technology enables a plethora of emerging or resurgent nations to aspire to leadership in a multi-polar world, what faces of totalitarianism will the peoples of the world endure? The Soviet example, where the regime saved the Siberian Tiger from extinction, and the sturgeon from genocidal slaughter? Today’s Chinese example, where within months mountains are moved into the sea to create a flat plain big enough for an Airbus A380 to land, and new dams on the Yangtzee contain a flow sufficient to generate nearly 18.0 gigawatts? Or the Western scheme, to regulate and ration production and consumption of carbon as if it were pollution instead of life for flora? Would only the best of all three be too much to hope for?

China, unlike Russia back in 1989, is unlikely to ever bow before the economic might of the west. But the power that fuels China’s prosperity is capitalist entrepreneurship, and there is no greater force for pluralism and democracy and economic growth than capitalist entrepreneurship. Prosperity breeds literacy and individual agency, which in turn fosters self-actualization, which impels individuals to demand more individual freedom along with more economic freedom. In these days of technological productivity putting prosperity within anyone’s grasp, it is only when a society discourages enterprise that prosperity eludes a critical mass of individuals; only when enterprise is overcome by corruption and control does pluralism give way to tyranny.

What road will Russia choose, reasserting themselves, possessing massive reserves of carbon, deep and world-class technology, and millions of sudden exiles who they still care for? Will the Russians join Nato? Will they attempt to reconstruct elements of the bloc they once commanded? Or will they find functional integration, well under way, sufficient imperative to form stronger alliances with Iran and China?

Then again, can the aspirations of China and Russia, and other rising nations, be embraced within a world where the price of war exceeds the price of peace, and therefore some overwhelming combination of forces always agree not to fight, everywhere? Where America’s leadership, combined with European commitment, convinces China and Russia to coexist with the west and the rest? To do this, the aspirations of nationalities must be balanced and policed; Russians in Georgia, Tibetans in China, or gross Deutschland in any 21st century incarnation, however innocent or otherwise, however contiguous or dispersed, in this high-density, pedestrian friendly, teeming and frighteningly finite global village.

Despite today’s mixed messages, it is neither ignoble nor absurd to hope a peaceful scenario is the fate of the world, that conflagrations are contained, that empires benignly collude instead of catastrophically collide. Hopefully the Olympic games, the exaltation they embody, the industry they inspire, the triumph of teams and individuals in peaceful competition, is what defines our future, as we merge fitfully but ineluctably into one global people.

Cement is good for hiding whatever lies underneath. Old mob movies bring to mind laughing goons pouring the wet grey slurry over an unlucky victim, while rotting garbage is buried underground and sometimes paved over. Cement is not seen in a positive light, especially not when it comes to the environment.

The innovative mind of John Harrison thought up the idea of using waste (typically industrial and carbon) in cement, rather than simply producing cement to pave around it. Harrison, managing director at Australia’s TecEco, founded a company with the goal of producing a building material with a positive environmental impact.

Now a brand name, eco-cement is a limestone base (like all cements) mixed with magnesium oxide which is heated in a kiln and turned to powder. This powder will eventually be added to gravel and water to form cement. The magnesium oxide in eco-cement lowers the kiln temperature to about half of that required by the most common cement used in the world: Portland cement. This substantially lowers the amount of energy needed to make eco-cement. Not only that, but eco-cement is more porous than other cements and the unique magnesium oxide/cement mix actually absorbs carbon dioxide from the environment (only for about a year, though)!

In TecEco’s question and answers forum, the company was asked how they came about the idea of “eco-cement”. The answer was that “the idea of using carbon and wastes in building materials came from nature. During earth’s geological history large tonnages of carbon were put away as limestone and coal by the activity of plants and animals building homes such as the shells of shellfish and wood in trees. These same plants and animals wasted nothing as food and nutrients moved around and the waste from one was the food or home of another. John concluded that the answer to greenhouse gas and waste was to use them both in building materials.”

True to this ideal, eco-cement can be completely recycled when a structure is no longer required and reformed again.

As the founder and current chair of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainable Materials in Construction (AASMIC), Harrison is obviously devoted to green building materials. Online he writes; “I believe that our approach to sustainability must be holistic. i.e. a bit like dieting. The pain of either dieting or exercise is less if one does both. So it is with progress towards sustainability – reductions in energy usage as well as massive sequestration, less rubbish (e.g. packaging) as well as new uses for it are required. Improvements in energy use efficiency have been relatively popular as they save money. The harder task I am addressing is how to get the CO2 out of the air.”

The ideas presented by TecEco are catching on and other companies like Zeobond, scheduled to start operations in February, are adopting similar philosophies.

A few days ago we got an email from a proponent of Algae farming to produce biodiesel. He referenced a study from 1998 sponsored by NREL entitled “Biodiesel from Algae.” Referencing the study, the writer stated, “Spanning almost two decades of research, this article covers the prospect of large scale production of biodiesel using relatively simple techniques. Although already a decade out of date, the information contained within is extremely timely…” He then quoted from the study directly:

Didymosphenia geminata, microscopic algae once scarce, but now in many streams and rivers of North America (Photo: US EPA)

“The ASP regularly revisited the question of available resources for producing biodiesel from microalgae. This is not a trivial effort. Such resource assessments require a combined evaluation of appropriate climate, land and resource availability. These analyses indicate that significant potential land, water and CO2 resources exist to support this technology. Algal biodiesel could easily supply several “quads” of biodiesel—substantially more than existing oilseed crops could provide. Microalgae systems use far less water than traditional oilseed crops. Land is hardly a limitation. Two hundred thousand hectares (less than 0.1% of climatically suitable land areas in the U.S.) could produce one quad of fuel. Thus, though the technology faces many R&D hurdles before it can be practicable, it is clear that resource limitations are not an argument against the technology.”

Is it this simple? The question of algae as a source of commercially viable transportation fuel certainly becomes more compelling ten years later, with a barrel of oil costing well over $100 and another ten years of dramatic advancements in genetic engineering. Here are just some of the companies developing techniques to extract fuel from Algae: Aquaflow Bionomics, Aurora Biofuels, < href="http://www.bionavitas.com/"a title="Bionavitas">Bionavitas, Blue Marble Energy, Greenfuel Technologies, Inventure Chemical, Live Fuels, Petro Sun, Sapphire Energy, Seambiotic, Solazyme, Solena, and Solix Biofuels.

Another way to assess the promise of Algae as a biodiesel feedstock is to compare it to cellulose as an ethanol feedstock, as we did recently in our report “Algae vs. Cellulose.” But the landscape shifts all the time as these technologies race to market. Last week I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Charles Wyman about the feasibility of algae. As someone who has done pioneering work towards commercializing cellulosic ethanol extraction, and the founder of Mascoma, Wyman certainly isn’t disinterested. But the market for transportation fuels is big enough for cellulose and algae; they compete with petroleum, not with each other. Wyman pointed out that extraction of fuel from algae depended on flat land, abundant water, sun and injections of CO2. Absent any of these factors, and the capital cost for algae systems went way up. Basically his point was there aren’t a lot of places where you have flat land and abundant water, which means not only the refinery would represent a major investment, as with cellulosic feedstock, but also the growing area. Sorghum and Miscanthus, by contrast, will find vast areas of viable land where they can grow, with minimal capital investment.

NREL’s study, ten years old, still timely, indeed presents the potential of algae to join other emerging alternative fuels as candidates to replace or augment petroleum. The fact that dozens of start-ups have sprung up to realize this potential indicates there is a genuine opportunity. But if a capital investment to create the algae ponds or enclosed growth reactors must be incurred along with the capital investment to build the refinery itself, algae as a fuel may find itself at a disadvantage vs. cellulosic ethanol.

Only an extreme libertarian would claim there is no role for government. In the face of population growth, aging infrastructure, and myriad new, cleaner and more sustainable ways to deliver energy, water and transportation resources, there is much to be done by the public sector. Green public works will create wealth and resource abundance. Green public works must include massive new infrastructures and determining what these will be is a qualitatively focused and very subjective exercise – despite the advances of science. In California, the self-proclaimed greenest state in the USA, what are these green infrastructure investments we should make?

BUILD DESALINATION PLANTS – Upgrade California’s existing coastal power facilities to also include desalination capability. This would allow desalination plants to be more easily built since their construction would merely involve extending existing facilities. Currently about 6.0 cubic kilometers of water from northern rivers are transferred into the Los Angeles Basin each year. It would only cost $30 billion to build desalination plants to completely replace 6.0 cubic kilometers of water – $634 per acre foot – and because water would no longer have to be pumped over the Tehachapi mountains, zero net energy would be consumed. If the brine is piped several miles offshore before release, the powerful California current will ensure it is dispersed adequately. Investing in massive desalination plants will free up water for farmers and Northern Californian ecosystems, and provide a decisive and cost-effective hedge against drought. Ref. California Water System, Desalination Cost, Affordable Desalination, Sverdrups vs. Brine.

INCREASE ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION – California needs to average about 50 gigawatts of output 24 hours per day if California’s commuters are going to turn electric. Currently California generates about 50 gigawatts during peak, and about half that at night. Extended range electric cars store at least 10 kWh onboard, all-electric cars store up to 50 kWh onboard. Whenever they are parked, these cars will all be micro-utilities for their owners. Load balancing with electric vehicles may provide a significant portion of load balancing necessary to make feasible large scale development of intermittant renewable power sources such as wind and solar. Along with utility scale wind and solar power plants, California should consider enhanced geothermal power, next generation nuclear power, and additional natural gas power plants. Investing in new power stations will facilitate the electrification of California’s vehicle fleet, and virtually eliminate California’s dependence on imported oil. Ref. Gigawatt-Hours per EV Commuters, Optisolar’s Thin Film, Utility Electric Storage, Bright Source’s Power Tower.

IMPROVE ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION – Direct current lines, that have ultra-modern relays but overall cost much less, can be installed in underground conduits. High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) power lines should cross California and extend onto a super-grid spanning all of North America, to allow highly efficient electricity transmission in great volumes over large distances. Upgrading to a bigger, more efficient power grid using HVDC also creates more capacity to harvest large surges of electricity generation. Wind hits the turbines on the west coast, and the cost of coal fired energy in Pennsylvania drops. Ref. The Electric Age, TREK’s HVDC Transmission, Mediterranean Solar.

BUILD MORE ROADS AND FREEWAYS – Along with increasing the supply of energy and water, California’s public works need to include better transportation conduits – and in this context the war on the car is incredibly short-sighted. The car, the most liberating personal transportation system ever conceived, is within a tantalizingly few years of becoming completely green. Cars will be totally recyclable, ultra-safe, non-toxic, smart, use clean and sustainable fuel, and have no ecological “footprint” whatsoever. Instead of making war on the car, we must simply make room for it. Wider boulevards, wider freeways, more parking structures. Instead of adding trolley tracks, create more lanes for vehicular traffic. The idea that mass transit – except perhaps in the case of high-speed rail – can’t be fulfilled on roads is ridiculous. Many practical schemes already exist, such as busses and taxis, or are emerging, such as share-cars and autopilot, that will allow abundant, unclogged roads to deliver mass transit more comprehensive than ever before. The tragedy is that by developing light rail and maintaining roads, neither is done well. Roads are far more versatile than light rail, and we need to rebuild and expand all of them.

The mentality in Sacramento, to continue using California as an example, is to prioritize conservation. The conventional wisdom is that we are on the brink of experiencing catastrophic scarcity in all areas, food, energy, water and land. Clearly it is important to legislate reasonable upgrades to energy and water efficiency standards for buildings, as well as encourage more efficient vehicles. But the notion that we are running out of energy, water and land, particularly in California, is ridiculous. What we are running out of is a balanced discussion of these issues. It is easy for policymakers, hiding behind the proclamations of extremist environmentalists, to pretend there are only hard choices – it allows prices to stay high, which enriches the public sector without requiring they make any new investments.

It is ultimately up to California’s voters – do they want to live in a state where energy, water and land are rationed, so higher consumer prices for these necessities translate into massive hidden taxes, or will they finally demand the public sector start doing its job, investing in infrastructure instead of benefits taxpayers don’t get, and extreme environmentalists get out of the way? Green public works, to supply more transportation, water and power, would create more good jobs, and having these amenities would enable leapfrog levels of economic growth.

As a free nation, a democratic nation, and a global superpower, America’s fate, today more than ever, is to midwife and manage the emergence of the first world generation. Not an easy task, as technology and globalization make every surviving cultural tradition anywhere suddenly replaced or confronted by every other on this shrinking planet, and our polity grapples with it all. It would be surprising indeed if America were not also considered a troubled nation, inflicting and incurring heartbreaking trauma every day in this imperfect world. But America’s fate is also a stroke of exceptional luck and opportunity.

The message for Americans to send the modernizing, globalizing peoples of the world, through thick and thin, is how bad things were, and how good things have gotten, and how we are on the brink of the best things ever. Despite lip service, sometimes effective agents of political change in America focus only on the worst possible end of things – endless war, imminent environmental apocalypse. But the enduring agents of exponential change in the world are technology and democracy, and these are forces of incredible good, that have brought unprecedented prosperity and opportunity to humanity. In only fighting demons, America risks losing what makes her most great. If dwelling on averting catastrophe replaces optimism and independent enterprise, America’s promise is at risk; her uniqueness, her gift to humanity. Optimism and independent enterprise has driven America, draws people to America, defines America. And like the flow of the river, optimism and enterprise cannot be kept down. Complaining is no way to get up every morning. Optimism, can-do, is America’s message to the world.
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Paddling towards pluralism.

Global environmentalism, despite a veneer of exhuberance and a facade of hope, today is mostly about doom and gloom. Extreme environmentalists, more powerful today than ever, at root are complainers, they are indignant, they are doomsayers, and they are dominant today for reasons that ought to be challenged. Perhaps the world is going to come to an end if we don’t all do exactly what they say. And perhaps it will not. In many cases environmentalism, and the policies to enforce it, already constitute the most regressive hidden tax in history, and global warming alarm will catapult these hidden taxes into the stratosphere of economic stagnation. With carbon trading and carbon taxes and carbon offsets set to eclipse rational environmental policy, our economy and our way of life are what is in peril, not our planetary icecaps, and only financial traders, professional accountants, attorneys, credentialed consultants, academic experts, corporate cartels and the public sector will benefit. The temple of ecological green will fill with the changers of the financial green, and common sense will be coopted and coerced by the color of money, no matter how the game is called, or how the rules are set. With global warming alarmist policy, we will rob from the poor and give to the rich as never before.

There is a lot of junk science out there on both sides of the environmental debate, as always with all debates, but extreme environmentalist junk science seems to be carrying the day, so that is where we most appropriately ought to shine our scrutiny. Daunting, to put it mildly, is the stupifying volume of all these authoritative and ostensibly terrifying studies. Example – yet another recent (and highly publicized) report reviewed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) called for additional and significant new regulations and levies. Citing “expert” studies, the report projected approximately 300 additional deaths in California due to additional pollution over the next few decades, unless massive corrective actions are not immediately undertaken. Despite its portentious tone, such a study is not an imperative, rationally compelling us to move towards a socialist police state, because it rests on utterly unimpressive projections – 300 deaths within a population of nearly 40 million is a statistically trivial outcome. There are infinite and totally unforseeable random outcomes, from infinite conceivable causes, that could reduce a population of tens of millions by a few hundred lives over a few decades.

The idea that anyone or any study can project economic or demographic results so far into the future with details so specific and fine is simply ridiculous. Equally absurd is that such fluff might suffice to justify transformative economic policies. If the California Air Resources Board takes something like this seriously, perhaps the entire agency should be eliminated and replaced with people who care about air pollution, not climate speculation and draconian policies that follow from such exercises of counting angels on the point of a needle. Yet whether it is 15 score additional dead over decades, or catastrophic collapse of every global ecosystem in the world within the same brief span, extreme environmentalists carry the public scene today, preaching like the saviours in Salem, burning witches and pressing life out of the truth with relentless stones of rhetoric both formidable in craft and terrifying in content.

We need environmentalists, of course we do, but we need environmentalists who care about the difference between a million and a billion, or a thousand and a million, and who make judgements accordingly. For informed citizens anywhere to leave both local and global environmental policy to a coterie of fanatics and their powerful opportunistic bedfellows – who hide behind opaque clouds of science as they unleash relentless media torrents, the sleet of indignation and the hailstones of fear – is tragic folly. Anyone who has formed an opinion on any environmental issue needs to think for themselves what passes the smell test, what provides an acceptable cost/benefit, absolutely reject reflexive, unexamined demonization of anyone who disagrees, and demand access to better data, unfiltered and unbiased.

America is a lucky, lucky nation and perhaps cursed as well with troubles so huge, but complaining and doomsaying will not make the world better as fast as optimism and unfettered enterprise. Setting people free to compete, nurturing meritocracy, sustainably improving entitlements everywhere, encouraging building and development – and letting green resume its place within the dazzling full spectrum of reality – will help optimize economic growth and tolerance for pluralism; will help create the next step in the ascent of man.