• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Charles Eisenstein

  • About
  • Essays
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
    • Charles Eisenstein Random
    • New and Ancient Story Podcast
  • Courses
    • Climate — Inside and Out
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course One
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Two
    • Conversations with Orland Bishop, Course Three
    • Dietary Transformation from the Inside Out
    • Living in the Gift
    • Masculinity: A New Story
    • Metaphysics & Mystery
    • Space Between Stories
    • Unlearning: For Change Agents
  • Books
    • The Coronation
    • Climate — A New Story
    • The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
    • The Ascent of Humanity
    • Sacred Economics
    • The Yoga of Eating
  • Events
  • Donate

The campaign against Drax aims to reveal the perverse effects of biofuels

April 24, 2014 by Charles Eisenstein

April 2014


 

Replacing fossil fuels with biofuels is, on the surface, an attractive idea. Rather than dig fossil carbon (oil, coal, gas) out of the ground, why not recycle the carbon already in the atmosphere? Plants use solar energy to incorporate carbon into their biomass; we can then burn them and cycle the carbon back into the atmosphere where the plants got it. No new carbon is released.

There is a dark side to this glittering promise, though. Too often, the quest to turn plants into fuel replicates or exceeds the worst effects of other extractive technologies. For example, in Brazil’s Cerrado region, a massive land grab is underway to convert diverse ecosystems and locally sustaining agricultural land into monoculture eucalyptus tree farms. To do that, non-deeded public land (the commons) that has been farmed by families for generations is being appropriated and privatised by agribusinesses.

Huge logging operations are devastating the Carolina swamp forests, which are among the world’s most biodiverse temperate forests and home to the only wild population of Venus fly traps and other carnivorous plants. The forests are being cut down to make wood pellets, some of which are shipped to the UK to feed the Drax electrical generation facility.

In Indonesia, native forests and peatlands are being destroyed to make room for palm oil plantations to produce biodiesel – often, again, through land grabs at the expense of local farmers. Palm oil plantations are also spreading in Africa.

US corn ethanol production has resulted in the vast expansion of cornfields into conservation land, untouched prairie land, and wetlands. Increasing amounts of chemical fertilisers and pesticides contaminate water supplies, and erosion has accelerated as fragile land is planted with corn.

OK, so biofuel production can be ecologically catastrophic, but at least it is carbon neutral, right? Well, not really. For one thing, for clearcut forests to fully regenerate takes decades or even centuries, resulting in a CO2 increase over the next 50 years. Secondly, deforestation often results in soil erosion and the release of carbon from formerly stable soil structures. Thirdly, when biofuel is produced from corn or sugar cane plantations, these have less embedded carbon than a mature forest would.

Clearly, current biofuel practices have to stop. While there may be a legitimate role for small-scale production of biofuels, industrial-scale operations are revealing themselves to be just as ecologically disruptive as fossil fuels and just as socially disruptive as other kinds of monocropping. Appalled by what is happening, an anti-biofuels movement is growing – for example, a protest against the Drax plant, which is at the forefront of Britain’s push toward biofuels, took place yesterday in London.

Companies such as Drax, Enviva (the woodchip mill operator in North Carolina) or Suzano (the company involved with eucalyptus plantations) benefit from government subsidies and other policies designed to promote biofuels; all three see themselves as green corporate citizens.

Are they operating a cynical public relations campaign and, motivated by sheer greed, putting a green facade over practices they know to be destructive? Many activists seem to think so, but the truth may be more complicated. They might genuinely believe their rhetoric. Even when they make statements to the effect that “we only burn forest wastes and residues”, which critics allege is not the case, they may live in a narrative that says “we are working to improve our practices.” As long as they can plausibly argue that they are developing a carbon-neutral energy source, they can maintain an image (to themselves and to others) as environmental do-gooders.

The situation with biofuels highlights the danger of making greenhouse gas reduction our number one environmental priority. The devastating effects of industrial biofuel production, and the pollution generated by woodchip-fired power plants – which are dirtier than coal in terms of nitrogen oxides, VOCs, particulates and carbon monoxide – illustrates that much harm can be justified (albeit sometimes spuriously) on CO2 grounds.

Arguments such as “we should oppose razing the forests to plant monocrop tree farms because they actually don’t help with CO2” carry the implication that if they did help with CO2, such practices would be OK. More generally, the greenhouse gas argument buys into a utilitarian logic that values forests, oceans and rivers for some instrumental end, and not in their own right as living beings. This is a primary enabling attitude behind our society’s destruction of nature. Arguments that implicitly validate the idea that nature is to be valued only as a means to an end (for example, as a “resource”) do not touch the deep love and care we need to access, if we are to have the courage to embark on fundamental systemic change.

Proponents of biofuels argue that the current problems can be fixed, and that the issue of greenhouse gases trumps other environmental issues. But even if biofuels could offer a carbon-neutral fuel source, we need to reflect on the kind of planet we want to live on. Do we want a world where the wild places are mostly gone, converted to biofuel plantations? Do we want a world in which nature exists just to burn?

We don’t, but that is fundamentally how our economic system, in which companies like Drax are embedded, sees nature. Quite possibly, the perverse consequences of what at first blush seems like a great idea are the inevitable results of seeing nature as a resource. As long as that doesn’t change, we will continue to do more harm even while trying to do good.

This essay originally appeared in The Guardian


Previous: Droga Portal, ¿hacia qué?
Next: Maconha: a porta de entrada, para o que?

Filed Under: Political & Social Tagged With: Essay, old story, technology

Primary Sidebar

All Essays

Peace-building

Time to Push

The Rehearsal is Over

Some Stuff I’m Reading

Beyond Industrial Medicine

A Temple of this Earth

The Sacrificial King

Words to a Young Man

How It Is Going to Be

What I’m doing here

Charles Eisenstein, Antisemite

Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed

Fascism and the Antifestival

The Death of the Festival

Source Temple and the Great Reset

To Reason with a Madman

From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope

World on Fire

We Can Do Better Than This

The Banquet of Whiteness

The Cure of the Earth

Numb

The Conspiracy Myth

The Coronation

Extinction and the Revolution of Love

The Amazon: How do we heal a burning heart?

Building a Peace Narrative

Xylella: Supervillain or Symptom

Making the Universe Great Again

Every Act a Ceremony

The Polarization Trap

Living in the Gift

A Little Heartbreak

Initiation into a Living Planet

Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling

Olive Trees and the Cry of the Land

Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development

Opposition to GMOs is Neither Unscientific nor Immoral

The Age of We Need Each Other

Institutes for Technologies of Reunion

Brushes with the Mainstream

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart

Transcription: Fertile Ground of Bewilderment Podcast

The Election: Of Hate, Grief, and a New Story

This Is How War Begins

The Lid is Off

Of Horseshoe Crabs and Empathy

Scaling Down

The Fertile Ground of Bewilderment

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Psychedelics and Systems Change

Mutiny of the Soul Revisited

Why I Don’t Do Internet Marketing

Zika and the Mentality of Control

In a Rhino, Everything

Grief and Carbon Reductionism

The Revolution is Love

Kind is the New Cool

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

From Nonviolence to Service

An Experiment in Gift Economics

Misogyny and the Healing of the Masculine

Sustainable Development: Something New or More of the Same?

The Need for Venture Science

The EcoSexual Awakening

“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.”

Harder to Hide

Reflections on Damanhur

On Immigration

The Humbler Realms, Part 2

The Humbler Realms

A Shift in Values Everywhere

Letter to my Younger Self

Aluna: A Message to Little Brother

Raising My Children in Trust

Qualitative Dimensions of Collective Intelligence: Subjectivity, Consciousness, and Soul

The Woman Who Chose to Plant Corn

The Oceans are Not Worth $24 trillion

The Baby in the Playpen

What Are We Greedy For?

We Need Regenerative Farming, Not Geoengineering

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder, Revisited

Activism in the New Story

What is Action?

Wasting Time

The Space Between Stories

Breakdown, Chaos, and Emergence

At This Moment, I Feel Held

A Roundabout Endorsement

Imagine a 3-D World

Presentation to Uplift Festival, 12.14.2014

Shadow, Ritual, and Relationship in the Gift

A Neat Inversion

The Waters of Heterodoxy

Employment in Gift Culture

Localization Beyond Economics

Discipline on the Bus

We Don’t Know: Reflections on the New Story Summit

A Miracle in Scientific American

More Talk?

Why Another Conference?

A Truncated Interview on Racism

A Beautiful World of Abundance

How to Bore the Children

Post-Capitalism

The Malware

The End of War

The Birds are Sad

A Slice of Humble Pie

Bending Reality: But who is the Bender?

The Mysterious Paths by Which Intentions Bear Fruit

The Little Things that Get Under My Skin

A Restorative Response to MH17

Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

Development in the Ecological Age

Gateway drug, to what?

Concern about Overpopulation is a Red Herring; Consumption’s the Problem

Imperialism and Ceremony in Bali

Let’s be Honest: Real Sustainability may not make Business Sense

Vivienne Westwood is Right: We Need a Law against Ecocide

2013: Hope or Despair?

2013: A Year that Pierced Me

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order

Fear of a Living Planet

Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything

The Next Step for Digital Currency

The Cycle of Terror

TED: A Choice Point

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

Latent Healing

2013: The Space between Stories

We Are Unlimited Potential: A Talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

Why Occupy’s plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Genetically Modifying and Patenting Seeds isn’t the Answer

The Lovely Lady from Nestle

An Alien at the Tech Conference

We Can’t Grow Ourselves out of Debt

Money and the Divine Masculine

Naivete, and the Light in their Eyes

The Healing of Congo

Why Rio +20 Failed

Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity

For Facebook, A Modest Proposal

A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

A Review of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years

Gift Economics Resurgent

The Way up is Down

Sacred Economics: Money, the Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Design and Strategy Principles for Local Currency

The Lost Marble

To Bear Witness and to Speak the Truth

Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right

Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough

Elephants: Please Don’t Go

Why the Age of the Guru is Over

Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age

A Circle of Gifts

The Three Seeds

Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension

Rituals for Lover Earth

Money and the Turning of the Age

A Gathering of the Tribe

The Sojourn of Science

Wood, Metal, and the Story of the World

A World-Creating Matrix of Truth

Waiting on the Big One

In the Miracle

Money and the Crisis of Civilization

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health

Invisible Paths

Reuniting the Self: Autoimmunity, Obesity, and the Ecology of Health (Part 2)

Mutiny of the Soul

The Age of Water

Money: A New Beginning (Part 2)

Money: A New Beginning (Part 1)

The Original Religion

Pain: A Call for Attention

The Miracle of Self-Creation, Part 2

The Miracle of Self-Creation

The Deschooling Convivium

The Testicular Age

Who Will Collect the Garbage?

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

You’re Bad!

A 28-year Lie: The Wrong Lesson

The Ascent of Humanity

The Stars are Shining for Her

All Hallows’ Eve

Confessions of a Hypocrite

The New Epidemics

From Opinion to Belief to Knowing

Soul Families

For Whom was that Bird Singing?

The Multicellular Metahuman

Grades: A Gun to Your Head

Human Nature Denied

The Great Robbery

Humanity Grows Up

Don’t Should on US

A State of Belief is a State of Being

Ascension

Security and Fate

Old-Fashioned, Healthy, Lacto-Fermented Soft Drinks: The Real “Real Thing”

The Ethics of Eating Meat

Privacy Policy | Contact

Charles Eisenstein

All content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Feel free to copy and share.

Celo: 0x755582C923dB215d9eF7C4Ad3E03D29B2569ABb6

Litecoin: ltc1qqtvtkl3h7mchy7m5jwpvqvt5uzka0yj3nffavu

Bitcoin: bc1q2a2czwhf4sgyx9f9ttf3c4ndt03eyh3uymjgzl

Dogecoin: DT9ECVrg9mPFADhN375WL9ULzcUZo8YEpN

Polkadot: 15s6NSM75Kw6eMLoxm2u8qqbgQFYMnoYhvV1w1SaF9hwVpM4

Polygon: 0xEBF0120A88Ec0058578e2D37C9fFdDc28f3673A6

Zcash: t1PUmhaoYTHJAk1yxmgpfEp27Uk4GHKqRig

Donate & Support

As much as possible I offer my work as a gift. I put it online without a pay wall of any kind. Online course contributions are self-determined at the time you register for each. I also keep the site clean of advertising.

This means I rely on voluntary financial support for my livelihood. You may make a recurring gift or one-time donation using the form below, in whatever amount feels good to you. If your finances are tight at all, please do not give money. Visit our contact page instead for other ways to support this work.

Recurring Donations

Note from the team: Your recurring donation is a resource that allows us to keep Charles doing the work we all want him doing: thinking, speaking, writing, rather than worrying about the business details. Charles and all of us greatly appreciate them!

One-Time Donation

Your gift helps us maintain the site, offer tech support, and run programs and events by donation, with no ads, sales pitches, or pay walls. Just as important, it communicates to us that this work is gratefully received. Thank you!

Cryptocurrency Donation

Hi, here we are in the alternate universe of cryptocurrency. Click the link below for a list of public keys. If your preferred coin isn't listed, write to us through the contact form.

View Keys



What kind of donation are you making?(Required)


Recurring Donation

We are currently accepting monthly recurring donations through PayPal; we use PayPal because it allows you to cancel or modify your recurring donation at any time without needing to contact us.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.

One-Time Donation

We are currently accepting one-time donations with any major credit card or through PayPal.


Choose what feels good, clear, and right.
Donation Method(Required)

Name(Required)
Email(Required)