Do you remember that retrofuturistic movie with Mel Gibson and Tina Turner? (here you can refresh your mind!) Basically, Tina Turner ran tyrannically a town called Bartertown where electricity, vehicles, and every sort of functioning technology —all almost unheard of in this post-apocalyptic world— are made possible by a crude methane refinery, fueled by pig feces, using a weathered semi tractor as the electricity generator.Well, change methanol for ethanol. Change Max character for Bush (just only Max) and you will have one of the most important reasons why Bush is travelling to Brazil.
Convinced about the necessity to diversify its sources of energy as well as its energy-dependency on hostile countries, Mr. Bush plans to foster the trade and the production of this kind of energy, very cheap to produce in Latam. The region could take important profits from this new adventure.
Another important issue of discussion related to biofuels is their impact on climate change... it seems that we are still far from resolving this type of problems! As Achim Steiner, the head of the UN Environment Programme has stated, for the specific case of Brazil, the unstoppable increase in sugarcane production is putting important biodiversity rich areas at risk!
1 comment:
There are no measures without side-effects. Biofuels are useful to reduce greenhouse emissions but they have other impacts. We know it.
However, we must decide priorities, because we can't solve climate change with innocuous and cheap actions.
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