Green Party support for BioFuels [updated]
This is a copy of a letter I’ve just emailed to one of my parliamentary representatives, Mr. Paul Gogarty TD. He’s a member of the Irish Green Party and my email was in response to a mail-shot on the subject of energy. Much of the leaflet was sound information on energy efficiency, renewables, grants for installing solar panels and heat pumps, a denunciation of nuclear energy… all good stuff. But the very first item is an article under the headline, “Biofuels can create new Irish jobs”. This piece heralds the worrying news that the EU has apparently set a target of almost 6% of transportation fuel to be sourced from biofuelstock by 2010.
I have a lot of time for The Greens, but am simultaneously irritated by their apparent desire not to rock the boat too much. If society decides to take the issue of Climate Change seriously, and in the face of a peak in oil and gas supply, then it will mean that individuals consume significantly less energy than they currently do. And although this may well provide long-term health and fulfillment benefits, it will be extremely uncomfortable, unpopular and maybe even unpleasant in the short to midterm.
Anyways… the letter…
Dear Paul,
I received your latest mail-out today (entitled €NERGY). With the exception of The Green Party, there is nobody in the political mainstream that comes even close to representing my views. Yet you seem to be doing your level-best to alienate even me, and turn my Green vote into a protest spoilt-ballot.
Your leaflet made some interesting points about energy efficiency, offered a rational dismissal of nuclear power and provided some useful information about renewable energy grants. But it also contained an extremely worrying recommendation of biofuels. You may as well have lauded China’s expansion of coal-power on the front page.
In fact, both your website and this latest mail-out trumpet “Biofuels” as a responsible alternative to fossil fuels. This is itself a wildly irresponsible position. The Chief economist at the UK’s Department for International Development recently estimated that “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year”. He may have been ’rounding-up’ the numbers for effect, but it still makes a mockery of biofuels as ‘ethical’ in a world where millions starve.
http://www.owen.org/blog/673Even worse, George Monbiot’s excellent article, ‘Worse Than Fossil Fuel’, explains exactly why large scale biofuel projects have traditionally worked out as being even more carbon intensive than burning oil or gas!
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/We live at a time when global climate change is perhaps the largest issue faced by our civilisation, and at a time when oil and gas supply could well be peaking. Organisations like The Green Party need to be loudly and frequently emphasising the need to dramatically scale back our energy usage as a society.
Yet such calls, where they are made in your literature, are greatly outnumbered and overshadowed by the glowing promise of more jobs (“Biofuels can create new Irish jobs”) and shiny new technology. One of the physical definitions of energy is ‘the ability to do work’. Our economy (the sum total of the work carried out by society) is no less than a giant engine to convert energy into material wealth. By promising more jobs, you are merely promising to accelerate that process.
Anyone who genuinely seeks to reduce carbon emissions needs to accept that the primary method of doing so must be a scaling back of economic activity. To promise such a thing may well seem like political suicide, but it would be honest. And I’ll always vote for the honest man above the good politician.
Yours sincerely,
Jim… (name and address provided)
[UPDATE] A Reasonable Response
Rather to my shock, Paul Gogarty TD responded to my email within a couple of hours of my sending it. More than that, he responded in a reasonable and measured manner which made my initial letter seem a wee bit shouty. I should probably make it a rule in the future not to write letters to politicians immediately having written a blog entry. It’s one thing being a bit strident and righteous when proclaiming to an unseen audience of billions; it’s quite another in a letter to another person.
Paul comes across very well in his response. I was just about to email him and ask if it was OK to post it here, when he posted it himself in the comments below (hi Paul!) which is where I’ll add a few further comments when I’ve worked out exactly what they are.
Hi Jim,
I thought I’d save you the hassle of posting my reply. So here goes:
Regards,
Paul Gogarty
Dear Jim,
Many thanks for your response to my recent leaflet.
You are quite correct on biofuels. Used as part of a global solution it will
lead to exploitation of developing countries, will not figure on the climate
change stakes and will of course be quite inefficient.
However the Green Party is promoting biofuels in an Irish context as part of
the solution for us here at home. As oil peaks and energy supply becomes
scarcer, we need to be able to power our future public transport and limited
private transport through domestic energy production. It will not be
available by any other means. Ireland has the capacity to cater for some of
its needs this way and to provide local jobs.
Part of this will be by stored energy through electricity generation using
other renewables, but it is essential we also use biofuels. Not for economic
growth but for basic survival, given the way this country has been planned
up until now.
You raised the issue of political suicide and honesty. If anyone asks me I
will give them an honest answer about what is facing us in the years to
come. But I will also point to the opportunities for Ireland to be
relatively energy secure in the new lower energy future.
The Green Party has consistently pointed out the need to drastically reduce
our energy consumption, but this is a message that the general public is
only getting used to. You have only heard of peak oil in the media here for
the last 18 months. Before, we were dismissed as idiots. The energy leaflet
is a way of introducing the general public to that concept, with a positive
angle.
I would love to be able to afford to drop a copy of George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’
and the “An Inconvenient Truth” DVD in every door, but unfortunately my
budget does not stretch to that.
It is better to focus on the positive side of the story to bring people on
board rather than sounding apocalyptic and turning them off before you even
get their attention. That isn’t dishonest, it is trying to engage. If you
get the time you might tune into RTE on Saturday evening during Trevor
Sargent TD’s address where you will see a delicate balance being struck between
the coming scenario and the positive opportunities.
I have forwarded your comments onto our Energy Spokesperson Eamon Ryan.
Thanks again for taking the time to read the leaflet and provide valuable
input.
Regards,
Paul Gogarty TD
—– Original Message —–
From: “jim ###”
To:
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 6:08 PM
Subject: Green Party support for BioFuels
> Dear Paul,
>
> Edited to remove text of original letter which
> can be read in it’s entirety above.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Jim ###
>
>
> PS: I have published this letter on my website (numero57.net). It’s a very
> low-traffic blog, but I figured you should be aware nonetheless.
>
>
February 20th, 2007 | 9:23pm
by Paul Gogarty TD
My father always used to write letters to the paper or to the prime minister/his local MP in the flush of rage after hearing about something or other. My mother always used to prevent him from sending them until a day or so had passed. Very few ever got sent in the end………….
February 20th, 2007 | 10:11pm
by RA
A sound piece of advice, RA. Sadly, like many such pieces of advice (“Just take the two minutes to read the instruction manual!” being another classic), I suspect it’s destined to go unheeded in my case.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, Paul. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m surprised, but I have — sadly — a tendency to be cynical about mainstream politics, and I (unfairly) assumed I’d receive a ‘form letter’ pumped out by an automated system somewhere.
Instead you’ve only gone and provided a reasoned and sensible response that addresses almost all of my criticism. Which, frankly, politicians aren’t supposed to do.
I’m suitably contrite.
BUT (there’s always one) I do still feel that your published material (both online and in print) gives a… I don’t want to say misleading… but perhaps ‘an unjustifiably rosy’ picture of your biofuels policy. When you write (above);
>
> As oil peaks and energy supply becomes scarcer, we need
> to be able to power our future public transport and
> limited private transport through domestic energy
> production.
>
I’m right behind you. In fact, I could easily have written those words myself… biofuels could allow for a sustainable rural public transport infrastructure. But your leaflet asks the question:
>
> Can our cars really run on crops grown on Irish farms?
>
and provides a fairly unequivocal response, “Yes they can!” with none of the sensible caveats you outlined in your email to me.
I feel certain that most people reading that will view it as confirmation that their car usage won’t have to change that much. And perhaps I’m doing you a dis-service, but that does seem to be how it’s pitched.
Again though, many thanks for your response.
February 20th, 2007 | 11:53pm
by Jim
NOTE: I’d like to make it clear that although this comes across as quite critical of Green Party policy, it’s only because they’re the only people with a set of policies sensible enough to constructively criticise in the first place. To use as a starting point. Policies that often don’t go far enough, in my view, but that are going in the right direction (biofuel rose-tint excluded).
On the other hand, there’s very little point in discussing the energy or transport policies of the other parties. Except perhaps as dark comedy (of the “can you believe how absurd human beings can be?” variety). You can’t constructively critique them. They’re heading so fast in all the wrong directions that the best thing to do is torch them and start again from scratch.
It’s also safe to say that the Greens have my vote. As I’ve written before; if nothing else a Green vote is a way of telling the future generations we’re currently screwing over, that some of us wanted to stop the madness… even if most of us didn’t.
February 21st, 2007 | 2:51am
by Jim
I think in the current context of debate in Europe, it makes sense to call politicians (of whatever stripe) on the exact meaning of their pronouncements on sustainability every chance you get. There’s no more popular word in UK gov policy documents (except maybe ‘growth’ – or ‘security’), but the idea that using it is actually meant to commit you to a definite policy direction leading away from other options that are unsustainable is not really understood – leading to the odd concept of ‘long-term sustainable economic growth’ and the idea that in order to cut use of fossil fuels, its best to stimulate industry’s demand for gas by building LNG pipelines everywhere.
Unless they get pinned down each and every time they try to bolster their legitimacy in this fashion, the fudging will just go on and on.
February 21st, 2007 | 10:52am
by Rochenko
Jim/Paul, has anyone done the maths on Ireland’s biofuel potential?
You’d need to look at crops suitable to the climate (probably oilseed rape, which yields much less than tropical palm oil and the like).
You’d need the area of land that could possibly be used (not, as some biofuel advocates use, the area of land the country occupies).
Then see what current vehicle fuel consumption levels are.
In the aforementioned Heat, George Monbiot says each European hectare of arable land produces 1.45 tonnes of fuel. This means the UK would need nearly five times its arable land to supply present vehicle usage. You’ve got a smaller population density, but still I’d be surprised if you could supply your present car use.
There are a few other factors too.
If you’re trying to reduce climate change impacts, you’ll be growing more of your food domestically, so the presently available land for fuels will diminish. How much food is presently imported? How much land would it take to grow all your own, and what fuel could be produced on the remainder?
All your proposed windpower will need back-up generators for days when it’s not windy enough (or too windy) to use the turbines. If you’re not going to use nukes or fossils, you are probably looking at burning biomass. Which, if you’re growing it domestically, will take up more land.
And this is all ignoring the fossil intensive agrichemicals that give us the high yields of food and fuel crops.
I’m sure the figures exist to do the maths, and the arithmetic is straightforward. I’d be interested to see the result. I’m willing to bet that an Ireland that’s more or less self-sufficient in food and fuel will not have much in the way of private car use.
Rochenko, you’re dead right about the word sustainability.
It is strikingly similar to what George Orwell talks about with ‘democracy’ in Politics And The English Language.
“In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
When oil and cement companies are talking about themselves as sustainable, it’s lost its meaning. As I wrote here, it’s become a synonym for profitability.
February 22nd, 2007 | 6:19pm
by merrick
Jim/Paul, has anyone done the maths on Ireland’s biofuel potential?
It’s funny you should ask that, Merrick. Check out: Biofuels – The fuel of the future
I make a bunch of very optimistic assumptions in favour of biofuels in that piece and arrive at an estimate. It seems that, to fuel the present Irish private automobile fleet (i.e. excluding freight, air, public transport, etc.); if we devote the entire arable area of Ireland (i.e. import all of our food, textiles and other agricultural products) to growing fuelstock we’ll still have to import a staggering 45% of our liquid fuel needs.
For private cars alone, we need 1.45 Irelands.
I’m really not sure that when people promote biofuels, they genuinely understand the scale of the numbers involved.
I agree with Paul‘s statement, above, that biofuels should be examined as a potential way of running public transport. But that’s not the impression being given by Green Party literature (in my view).
February 22nd, 2007 | 8:16pm
by Jim
Thanks again to Jim for writing the letter in the first place and your fair-minded reaction to my response.
I spoke in a debate on biofuels during the Green Party Ard Fheis, supporting Mary White’s calls for Carlow to be made a Green Energy town and centre of excellence for biofuels. But first I stressed the global consequences of biofuels and the energy shortfall issue, as did our Energy Spokesperson Eamon Ryan.
I remember being on “The Right Hook” show about three years ago pointing out that while we had to tackle gridlock on the M50 now, public transport was the best way of doing so. One of the arguments I used was that even after widening, the M50 would still be congested, but that in 20 years the road would be much emptier because there wouldn’t be as much fuel to go around.
I was laughed at and some of the texts suggested my sanity was in question.
So forgive me for couching it in optimistic terms. The leaflet I sent around is an adaptation of a nationwide leaflet which also goes into rural areas. Farmers and rural-dwellers will be the ones most affected by the lack of fuel. Yet they are the very ones who have the greatest scope for local production of fuels both for farm machinery and private vehicles.
The “yes they can!!!” (which I didn’t pen) was related to the fact that most farmers are not looking at the alternatives and have a wholly negative view of the Green Party, even though our policies look to keep them on the land and improve their incomes.
Biofuels are only part of the solution in Ireland. It may well be that Ireland will be able to fuel other vehicles through stored electrity (see http://www.theaircar.com), but that is another debate. But thanks again for the comments and the interest shown.
Regards,
Paul Gogarty
February 26th, 2007 | 2:34pm
by Paul Gogarty TD