News | June '07 | Greening Scotland
Efforts to introduce GM solutions to curb carbon emissions seem to have had very little direct effect on Scotland. So far, we seem to have been limited to the pledge by our only professional motor racing team to convert their racing cars to use biofuel made from barley, and to plant trees. At the same time, the supply and price of barley for brewing beer and whisky are threatened by the crop's diversion for biofuel production and by displacement to make field-space for soya, maize and oil-seed crops.
(COMMENT Scotland might, of course, be 'greener' with no motor-racing at all, and healthier without beer and whisky. But these industries are very lucrative)
The slightly bigger picture is that the EU is busy setting targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions, which we will all be bound by.
While welcoming action, conservationists are increasingly worried that our carbon emission targets will be met only by causing increases elsewhere. They point to the existence of 'good' biofuels and 'bad' biofuels (see BIOFUELS: A SUSTAINABILITY SHAM – News, May 2007). Friends of the Earth said “Europe shouldn't be setting targets until it's put a mechanism in place to block bad biofuels”.
Huge areas of forest are being cleared to make way for palm and GM soya planting. Where this is done by burning the native vegetation, enormous amounts of trapped carbon are released into the atmosphere. In Borneo, when permission is granted to clear rainforest to create palm plantations, companies can legally take away the trees which are an invaluable carbon sink, but may then abandon the land without replanting anything.
ACTION
What can we, in Scotland, do?
-
Put pressure on your MEPs to insist that no unsustainable GM biofuels are supported or encouraged in any way by the EU.
- Support the World Wildlife Fund. This organisation has put forward a practical, multi-pronged approach to meeting global energy demand without damaging the environment:
- improve energy efficiency
- stop clearing forests (for growing GM crops)
- increase resources for low-emissions technology development
- develop flexible fuels
- replace high-carbon coal with low-carbon gas
- equip fossil-fuel plants with carbon capture and storage technology
- Since a quarter of the UK's carbon emissions comes from its homes, do some research into what you can do to make your home greener
- See what might be done within your community. Check out www.transitiontowns.org
SOURCES
- Metro 2.02.07, 27.02.07, 16.05.07 and 1.06.07
- Food Magazine 76 Jan/Mar 2007
- Guardian 4.04.07